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A Movement for Justice
- Augsburg Fortress Publishers
- Chapter
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5 A Movement for Justice The proposals of the previous chapter are important for responding to crime and individual wrongdoing in ways that reduce reoffending, lead to social reintegration of offenders, maintain public safety, and establish justice for all people affected by crime, especially victims. They provide direction for effective criminal justice reform. These proposals alone, however, will not end mass incarceration in the United States. The first genuine prison society was not created because of high crime rates, but because of social, cultural, economic, and political factors that coalesced into a willingness in our country to imprison more people for longer periods of time, especially young black men from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. Our crisis of criminal justice reflects a crisis of social justice in our society. The effects of mass incarceration in the United States, in turn, have helped sustain, and even worsen, this social justice crisis in ways that further marginalize, disempower, and endanger members of our society. Because of the ways in which criminal and social justice are fundamentally intertwined, an adequate response to these crises cannot stop with implementing restorative justice and rehabilitation as alternatives to incarceration or with downscaling prison populations. We must also attend to the ways in which social injustices fostered our criminal justice crisis and the ways in which our criminal justice policies and practices help perpetuate social injustices. This criterion for an adequate response to our circumstances suggests that we must move beyond the questions of chapter 4 regarding how to respond effectively to crime and individual wrongdoing. It indicates that our concerns cannot be limited to crime control, guilt or punishment, costs or benefits, deterrence, retribution, or incapacitation. If we wish no longer to be the first genuine prison society, we must engage in more thoughtful reflection on our character, beliefs, and actions as individuals, as communities, and as a society as a whole. What kind of people do we want to be? What do we want our communities to be like? What holds us together, and what breaks us apart? 149 What barriers prevent us from achieving a common good in which everyone is treated as a fully human person? If not a genuine prison society, then what type of society do we wish to create? Director of The Sentencing Project Marc Mauer argues that answering these sorts of questions and acting upon our answers are necessary for ending mass incarceration. He writes, “The first step [in addressing mass incarceration] involves expanding the discussion of crime policy beyond the day-to-day debates on the relationship between prison and crime to more fundamental concerns about the type of society we wish to create.”1 Catholics have a rich heritage of social teaching that informs our answers to these questions. This heritage ultimately finds its ground in our liturgical and sacramental life, particularly our participation in the Eucharist. Through liturgy, we engage in the public service of prayer, but also the public service rendered by the ekklesia unto others, especially the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. As sacramental, our service consecrates human life, disclosing the hidden reality of salvation and drawing us more deeply into the world in anticipation of the ultimate mystery of God’s reign. Our hope in God’s reign enlivens us as we work for justice by serving God and neighbors, particularly victims of injustice. The Eucharist, as the pinnacle of liturgy and sacrament, is the perfection of the church in the consecration of the world through public service in emulation of Jesus Christ. In this sacrament, Catholics and many other Christians are reoriented in light of a new vision or world-picture that upholds certain norms and behaviors as meaningful. Others’ needs and God’s will for establishing love, peace, freedom, justice, humanity, and life in response to those needs are disclosed. We are formed morally to a eucharistic vision, and this vision inspires our understanding of just individuals, communities, and societies. To answer the fundamental concerns about the type of society we wish to create and to find direction about how we should individually and collectively respond to our social justice crisis, Catholics must begin with our eucharistic life. The Eucharistic Vision and Social Justice Our ritual lives shape us morally. In our individual and communal worship practices, reiterated from week to week, we encounter a vision of God’s reign. Liturgical theologian Don Saliers writes that liturgy is a “continuing exercise of recalling, sustaining, and reentering [a] picture of the cosmos,” and that as...