Good Punishment?: Christian Moral Practice and U.S. Imprisonment

More than 2 million persons occupy America's prisons and jails today -- the highest per capita incarceration rate in U.S. history. With just 6 percent of the world's population, the United States now holds 25 percent of its prisoners. At what social cost do we build and fill more prisons?

In Good Punishment? James Samuel Logan critiques the American obsession with imprisonment as punishment, calling it "retributive degradation" of the incarcerated. His analysis draws on both salient empirical data and material from a variety of disciplines -- social history, anthropology, law and penal theory, philosophy of religion -- as he uncovers the devastating social consequences (both direct and collateral) of imprisonment on such a large, unprecedented scale.

A distinctive contribution of this book lies in its development of a Christian social ethics of "good punishment" embodied as a politics of "healing memories" and "ontological intimacy." Logan earnestly explores how Christians can best engage with the real-life issues and concerns surrounding the American practice of imprisonment.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: James Samuel Logan
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Published: 01/02/2008
ISBN: 9780802863249
Pages: 271
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.97h x 6.07w x 0.70d

Review Citations: Christian Century 05/19/2009 pg. 34