Book review: Voices from American Prisons: Faith, Education and Healing by Stern, K., reviewed in Prison Service Journal, 233: 46-47 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Voices from American prisons: faith, education and healing
Restorative Justice
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Punishment and Society, 2022
Written by two religion scholars, Break Every Yoke is a wide-ranging profile of religion's significance to prison abolitionism. Focused on American mass incarceration, and critical of the secular state's options as well as ongoing calls for prison reform, the book argues that religion is not only helpful in the abolitionist effort, but essential-carrying with it more radical visions capable of leveling the current prison system. Beyond a utilitarian vision, Dubler and Lloyd understand that mass incarceration emerged in the same cultural moment as the big box store and megachurch. Thus they seek to present not only how religion can assist abolitionism, but also how religiously-inclined prison reformers ought to embrace abolitionism as the only way to meaningfully address the prison problem. Committed unequivocally to prison abolitionism (emphatically: not reform), the authors illustrate visions of how the modern world might be remade if deeper, more radical religious roots are drawn from and appropriated. These roots hail not from the litany of secular approaches to mass incarceration, they argue, nor from carefully curated and often repressed domesticated forms of religion, but from the fervor of genuine religious faith; or, they curiously suggest: at least 'something closely related to religious faith' (p. 10). The book's passionate argument and plea is that 'without getting religion-and igniting whole religious communities with abolitionist fire-prison abolition will never acquire its necessary force' (p. 11). The first chapter opens with this argument, accepting nothing less than full-blown prison abolitionism as the only possible way to rethink the prison, with the assumed necessity of incarceration being so deeply ingrained into today's understandings of justice. Lest the argument for abolitionism-shutting down every jail and prison-seem superficial or mere posture, the book's core (chs. 2-4) provides historical exposition fleshing-out what the authors call 'the spirit of abolition.' The exposition carries insights into rationale from normative theological views and material expressions of religion, with the authors claiming to be working not as historians proper, but as scholars of culture, of religion, and as genealogists. This shapes the book's argument, charting how the Civil Rights Era's political pressures once required religious fervor supported by theological arguments. But these vanished after the Civil Rights Era, giving rise to the 'political theology' that built mass incarceration.
Practical Theology & the Shift from Prison Reform to Prison Abolition
As mass incarceration and the racial and socio-economic injustices that fuel it continues to plague the U.S., contemporary religious scholarship has become increasingly aware of and responsive to these problems through a variety of theological analyses and ethical calls for change. Yet many of these religious responses seem to fall short, myopic in their analyses of what has created and sustained the prison industrial complex and limited in their subsequent calls for reform. Drawing upon the work of Richard Osmer and Juan Luis Segundo, this paper argues that practical theology offers a useful corrective theo-ethical lens, their methodological frames simultaneously engendering more precise and thorough analysis as well as more imaginative and liberative responses. Specifically, this paper argues that practical theology calls for a shift in theo-ethical discourse and action from prison reform to that of prison abolition.
The prison seminary movement and the impact of faith-based programmes
Open Access Government, 2023
share key challenges affecting America's prison system, the prison seminary movement and the positive impact that faith-based programmes can have Early correctional practices in the US were more collaborative than those used in today's prisons. They combined state resources with philanthropic, religious, and civic assets to manage better and foster offender rehabilitation. The overarching goal was rather basicincentivise future good behaviours, not simply punish former bad ones.
Prisons and Religion in the Americas
Religion Compass, 2013
Since the 1970s and Michel Foucault's work discipline and power, scholars of religion in the Americas have looked to prisons to track changing ideas about human behavior, wrongdoing and reconciliation, social organization, and citizenship. This article provides a brief transatlantic history of the prison and scholarship on prisons and religion. It surveys work by historians, sociologists and anthropologists, and theologians and ethicists. It shows that religions have served as not only the material from which societies construct their disciplinary forms but also a resource upon which individuals draw when labeled criminal and communities invoke when seeking reform.
Conversion and the Story of the American Prison
Critical Survey, 2011
This article explores how the rehabilitative discourse of the American prison system shapes the writings of American prisoners. The article begins by tracing how the conversion narrative underpins prison reformers' theories of prison rehabilitation. Then, the article considers how American prisoners like use the conversion narrative and theories of rehabilitation in their life writings. The article argues that prisoners' life writings do not, as is often presumed, 'write back to power' so much as invoke competing discourses that contest but also reinforce the ideology of the American prison system.
From Violation to Revelation: Finding Faith in the Depths of Prison Hell
2014
List of Tables v Table of Contents vi Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study 1 Statement of the Problem 1 Purpose of the Study 2 Chapter 2: The Criminal Justice System: An Overview 4 Currently, there is little research that examines if worship services and faith-based programs aid inmates in preventing recidivism. Accordingly, there are even less scientific studies that examine the association between participation in prison-based religious services and/or faith-based programs and inmate misconduct while in custody (Johnson,