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251 Postscript w i l l i a m s c h w e i k e r This volume has offered a feast of ideas and concerns about some of the most pressing issues our society now faces. It has given us a glimpse of the human face of suffering and the longing for justice and mercy in a harsh and violent world. The different perspectives have addressed many facets of justice and mercy in the criminal justice system. How can one possibly and properly conclude such a book? By the nature of the case, anything I write will not be enough. The contributors’ ideas, theories, arguments, facts, and figures would all need to be clari- fied, debated, and tested. What is more, it is not at all clear in an interdisciplinary conversation like this one what perspective or standpoint one could hold to review the event. Like so much in our complex world, it is not obvious what perspective one should adopt in order to interpret and so to glimpse the whole, if it even makes sense to speak of “the whole.” As in quantum physics so too in moral and political argument, one’s perspective on a phenomenon changes the phenomenon. This is all the more true in morals and politics insofar as one’s perspective is part and parcel of one’s self-identity and political community. What to do? Should I adopt the academic perspective I know best, that is, theological ethics, realizing that a legal or philosophical or political perspective is also possible? If I were to do so, I would want to explore issues about creation and its goodness as the ground for justice, ideas about a God who actually repents, and complex languages of evil and human viciousness. We have at our disposal an exceedingly rich religious language one could use to explore justice and mercy. But part of the point of this volume is to disallow any one discourse the right to define the terms of reflection. So perhaps I should drop the pretenses of theological ethics to view the “whole.” Should I then try some other standpoint to assess this book, realizing that in doing so my own best training will be forsaken? Surely that would not be right. V4366.indb 251 V4366.indb 251 8/22/07 3:21:50 PM 8/22/07 3:21:50 PM 252 william schweiker I do not see any easy way out of the hermeneutical problem. Given that fact, I intend to work interpretively armed with the resources at my disposal. I want to try to catch the issues that swirled around these essays. But I realize that what I offer is one among many possible accounts of the volume. The book must be seen, I submit, as a modest but important attempt to address the vague and often superficial ways in which criminal justice issues are treated in our society. Put simply, the book is dedicated to the task of addressing public issues in a way that is both intellectually rigorous and attentive to the religious and theological issues involved. It is, therefore, a work in public theology. As we know too well, rarely do basic questions in criminal justice receive informed and careful debate. The political climate after the horrific events of September 11, 2001, has made it increasingly difficult to engage sustained, critical debate about public policy. Even the idea of entering into violent conflict with another nation proved astonishingly difficult to debate within our own country. But a democracy silenced is a democracy dying. In this light, consider the following questions that shaped the essays: 1. What is the warrant for and use of incarceration? 2. How do racial inequalities and the abuse of women in society continue to present challenges for the criminal justice system? 3. What are the rights of the imprisoned and those who have served their sentences? 4. Why and to what end is capital punishment used in this country when there is such a risk of the execution of the innocent in addition to the fact that it hardly functions as a deterrent? 5. What forms of punishment are used, and what are their justifications? 6. What is the relation between economic and cultural forces to issues of criminal justice? 7. In a harsh criminal justice system, are there any “echoes of grace,” as Ernie Lewis put it? If nothing else...

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