Prisons Are an Abomination
Wow this is something else. The historical revisionism and simultaneous appeal to Catholicism is ridiculous.<p>While prisons have many problems and the church has spoken against poor treatment of prisoners for many years, the opposite conclusion -- that we should abolish prisons -- is nowhere to be found in the compendium of social teaching. Moreover, the idea that prisons should serve a purely restorative role is a modern invention. While restoration is certainly one goal, catholic teaching also commands just punishment for crimes. The issue today is disproprotionality in the sentence when compared with the crime committed.<p>Had the author stuck to that point, he would have had a good essay. Instead he claimed all prisons are immoral. This is simply at odds with the Catholic social teaching that just societies must seek temporal justice on behalf of the victimized<p>Claims that prisons did not exist in the past are met with obvious skepticism when you read about the apostles being imprisoned for sedition as well as the catholic moral commandment to visit the imprisoned. Long sentences are of course more common today as the power of the state has grown, but this is not something to be criticized since many prisoners who have long sentences today would have been swiftly executed in the past.<p>(Focusing on catholic teaching here because its from notre dame and Villanova)