How might our criminal justice system promote regeneration

Assignment Help Business Law and Ethics

Reference no: EM133725171

Assignment:

Help with responding to the post with a considerate and substantive comment or question......

Part 1: Rehabilitation: How might our criminal justice system promote regeneration and restoration after one has committed a crime?

I believe that a criminal justice system that Jesus truly influences will seek forgiveness and rehabilitation. After all, "if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (The ESV Bible, Mt. 6.15). To put this into action, however, is a much harder thing to rationalize than to merely state in theory. Every ethical issue such as this one has studies on either side that promote this or that method of rehabilitation or retribution. Although I wish it was simply as easy as presenting the gospel and watching the Holy Spirit change everything, it seems that this is not always the way it works.

Everyone presented with the gospel will not hear, and even some of those who do may falter along the way. Thus, I will do my best to present a few things that our (in my opinion, deeply flawed) justice system could do better to rehabilitate prisoners.

First of all, I believe giving prisoners more freedom within the prison environment would treat them with greater dignity. Scandinavian prisons (at least the ones for those who qualify for more progressive prisons; some high-security prisons exist too for the most violent and dangerous prisoners), which have some of the best rehabilitation rates in the world for prisoners, allow prisoners to cook their own meals, wear their own clothes, and have private visits from family members (Nava Law).

Treating humans like animals like we do in our prisons where even minor offenders are forced to wear cult-like homogenous garments and rely on a lunch line like an elementary schooler for food at least anecdotally would lead to humans losing their sense of dignity and beginning to act like animals. We as a Christian community have thought more about what prisoners "deserve" (forgetting what it is we deserve, of course) than what they truly need, which we understand is Jesus. Second, allowing prisoners to learn valuable skills while within prison may offer them a better means of living once they leave prison than they currently have. Paying them an actual wage, of course, rather than the pennies prison jobs supply now would help them to be able to afford to live once they leave prison. Perhaps there is a way to limit the ways this money could be spent in order to ensure it gets spent in an "above ground" manner.

Part 2:

Suicide and euthanasia being presented as a "good death" or a "death with dignity" ultimately falls flat as a presentation because they are a means for mankind to grasp autonomy over death. God controls all, even death, and has the final say over it (1 Cor. 15.26). Also, assisted suicide or euthanasia arguments often result from a foundation of the description of dignity that is tied to someone's effectiveness in society. Even if a human being is old and requires care, they are still endowed with infinite dignity because they reflect the image of God (Gen. 1.26-28). Despite this biblical argument, it does not make the situation much easier or simpler for someone who is walking through an end-of-life scenario.

Truthfully, I have not counseled many people in such a scenario, and my lack of experience is making it hard for me to imagine what I would say even in a hypothetical! I believe the most helpful thing to say in such a scenario would be a reminder of the hope that one day God will wipe away every tear, take away all pain, and restore humanity, raising them again in a glorified body (Rev. 21-22; 1 Cor. 15.42-53). Just as we can hope for God's sovereign control in the future consummation of the kingdom, so can we hope for God's sovereign control in the moments of death. If we seek His purposes and comfort, we may find it even in our darkest moments.

Works Cited

Nava Law. "American vs. Scandinavian Prisons | Nava Law Firm." Nava Law, 2024.

The ESV Bible. Crossway, 2001.

Reference no: EM133725171

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