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A Model for Criminal Justice Reform
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4 A Model for Criminal Justice Reform This chapter explores promising reforms to our criminal justice systems and relates the practices of those reforms to the practices of the sacraments. Based upon liturgical and sacramental ethics, Penance and Reconciliation has actually been the normative means within Catholic tradition for responding to wrongdoing. In the bishops’ words, it is the fundamental Catholic model for “taking responsibility, making amends, and reintegrating into the community.”1 This sacrament has been closely linked to the Eucharist throughout the history of the church; Penance and Reconciliation arguably cannot be understood fully outside of the context of the eucharistic community. Moral theologian William Cavanaugh maintains that while the Eucharist is the locus of forgiveness and reconciliation in the church, its practice also requires judgment, or in Paul’s words, discernment, within the community.2 The Christian community seeks unity by evaluating when members conform to the powers of the world, rather than to the ways of discipleship. Ideally, in judging those who violate other individuals or the community, the church extends the opportunity to become reincorporated into the body of Christ through Reconciliation. While modern practices of this sacrament often seem individualistic and privatized, penitential practices in the early church were communal and public. Also, while Penance today is often perceived as metaphorical self-flagellation for the sake of alleviating unhealthy guilt, the purpose of these practices was seen as “medicinal,” restoring the wholeness of the wrongdoer for full communion with the body of Christ and resulting in reconciliation. The sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, not prison, has been the normative means in Catholicism for achieving the ends of social reintegration and internal reform of people who do wrong.3 Many analogies 1. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2000). Available online at http://www.nccbuscc.org/sdwp/criminal.shtml. 2. William T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), 234–52. 111 can be found between practices of Penance and Reconciliation, in particular, and practices of restorative justice and rehabilitation found by criminologists to be effective for reducing reoffending. This chapter considers the possibilities of these means for effectively responding to crime and individual wrongdoing, ultimately proposing a model for our criminal justice systems based fundamentally on restorative justice and secondarily on rehabilitation, resorting to incarceration only when these courses of action fail. Before proceeding to this argument, I want to remind readers that this chapter addresses only some of the criteria for an adequate response to our criminal and social justice crises. Criminal justice reform is necessary in an effort to address our crisis of criminal justice; the proposals of this chapter aim to provide direction for such reform. The need to assure skeptical readers of not only the morality but also the effectiveness of criminal justice reform has motivated my interdisciplinary engagement with criminology here. I seek to demonstrate that restorative justice and rehabilitation can reduce reoffending, lead to social reintegration of offenders, maintain public safety, and establish justice for all people affected by crime. But reform is not sufficient; the proposals of the next chapter aim to provide direction for changing the broader context of social injustice that our criminal justice systems reflect and sustain. On Restorative Justice Of course, the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation cannot be instituted as the central practice of a modern Western penal system. The discussion of the previous chapter reveals how this sacrament is rooted in ecclesial community. We cannot simply translate Penance and Reconciliation into a pluralistic society that does not maintain the same religious and communal commitments that ground this sacrament. Nevertheless, similarities between early Christian penitential practices and modern restorative justice practices may provide theological support for the latter among Catholics. In Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration, the U.S. bishops seem to recognize the analogy between the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation and practices of restorative justice, but they do not elaborate upon these connections or offer significant justification of restorative justice from a theological perspective. 3. For discussions of the development of the sacrament of Penance and its relationship to Eucharist, see Joseph Martos, Doors to the Sacred: A Historical Introduction to Sacraments in the Catholic Church, revised edition (Liguori, MO: Liguori/Triumph, 2001); Monika K. Hellwig, Sign of Reconciliation and Conversion: The Sacrament of Penance for Our Times (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1982); and Bernhard Poschmann, Penance and the Anointing...