Conversion and the Rehabilitation of the Penal System

Abstract

The contemporary practice of criminal detention is a protracted exercise in needless violence predicated upon two foundational errors. The first is the inability to view those enmeshed in its rubrics and institutions as human beings fully capable of responding to an affirmative accompaniment rather than maltreatment and invasive forms of therapy. The second is a pervasive dualism that erects an illusory barrier between criminal detainees and those empowered to supervise, punish, and/or rehabilitate them. This book maintains that the criminal justice system can only be “rehabilitated” by eliminating punishment and policies based upon deterrence, rehabilitation, and the hyper-incapacitation of the urban poor in favor of the original justification for the practice of confinement: conversion. The latter will be presented as a progressive expansion of one’s intellectual, moral, and spiritual horizons that is self-generated and leads to the goal of including everyone and everything in a careful embrace.

Controversial Questions About the Ideological Origins of the Pennsylvania System of Prison Discipline

“…However, it is precisely the intimate nexus between solitary confinement and the precepts of the Society of Friends that contemporary researchers, champions of the theological underpinning of the Pennsylvania system, anchor their assertions upon. In their assessment, solitary confinement seamlessly aligned with the core tenets of Quakerism, deeply rooted in the pursuit of Inner Light (Vasilyeva, 2015;Skotnicki, 2000).…”

“…According to Skotnicki, the very principles of the Quakers constituted the impetus that propelled the formulation and execution of the stringent solitary confinement system, with the divergence into two distinctive penitentiary models (Pennsylvania and Auburn) being ostensibly driven by Pennsylvania's Quaker affiliation and New York's Calvinist inclinations (Skotnicki, 2000).…”

Order, Reform, and Abolition: Changes in Catholic Theological Imagination on Prisons and Punishment

“…76 By his account, conversion is the "most historically and morally coherent justification for the pain of confinement." 77 He is clear that this pain should not be externally imposed; rather, the guilty person brings this pain upon themselves by recognizing the alienation and suffering that is the cause of their harmful behavior. Accordingly, Skotnicki declares it is morally wrong to punish; retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation are rejected.…”

“…Skotnicki passionately argues that "seeing the offender as 'other' is the very problem that needs to be addressed" and yet he concludes that the prison should serve "the unrepentant, the cruel, the violent, and those who prey upon the weak." 95 In doing so, he unwittingly demonstrates that as long as there are prisons, we cannot but define the persons in them as "other. "…”