Conclusion

The revolution needed in criminal justice begins with the sense that in the human drama to varying degrees all are sacred and all are villains. This universal human contradiction is reconciled through conversion–the expansion of intellectual, moral, and spiritual vision to include to an ever–widening degree everyone and everything. No one ever needs to be punished to achieve this level of integrity since the longing for participation and full communion is a property of the human spirit. Thus, the only persons who need criminal detention are the wilfully violent and predatory-not for the purpose of punishment but as members of a community of wounded healers who are loved into sociability.

What Is Wrong with Rehabilitation?

This chapter first shows the equivocal nature of the definition of rehabilitation or desistance. It then provides what it sees to be the rudiments that the varying approaches to the concept have in common. These common assumptions mirror the commitments of the other common justifications for detention: social conservatism, dualism, and the ever-present threat of coercive force for those who fail to participate or do so in an uncooperative manner. The chapter then critiques what it sees to be the four dominant expressions of the rehabilitative philosophy: Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR); the Good Lives Model (GLM); the virtuous prison; and restorative justice. Although the chapter is critical of all four of the above formulations, an effort is made to show how various aspects of the conversion paradigm are evident in these approaches. Thus, the chapter is more an invitation to dialogue and to expand the moral horizon of rehabilitative discourse than a dismissive diatribe.

How Conversion Can Rehabilitate the Penal System

This chapter provides an outline of a penal system patterned upon conversion. It argues that any form of violence or reduction of the problematic to “dependent variables” in an equation of pain delivery or social control is immoral and ineffective. It first looks at ways in which front-end initiatives might eliminate the need to incarcerate a large majority of those currently under custody. It combines the restorative approach to dialogue with contemplative practices of meditation as the necessary rudiments of a fully human life, regardless of one’s involvement with the law. It then presents its vision of penal organization for the truly violent and unrepentant to be one of careful accompaniment. Since it is predicated upon an ontology of fundamental human goodness, the person comes naturally to conversion without force or intimidation. There is a balance of solitude, association, and accompaniment by a mentor.

Conversion as Inclusion

The dynamics of conversion are presented in this chapter. It first clarifies what conversion is not. It is not adhesion—attaching oneself to a particular community and maintaining an oppositional or at least suspicious attitude regarding other forms of association or structures of belief. Conversion is seen as the progressive expansion of one’s horizon of acceptance and care at the intellectual, moral, and spiritual levels. Its proof is precisely in its nonjudgmental and compassionate presence to new ideas and to the other. It always begins with a crisis in the lifeworld of the convert. This is followed by a gratuitous moment of acceptance despite one’s feeling of alienation. The “peak experience” then fosters an alteration of one’s personal narrative and community and an ongoing sense of accountability and embodiment of the communal narrative. The final stage of conversion reveals a profound sense of unity with all aspects of reality.

Introduction

A revolution is needed not only in the practice of criminal justice but also in its grammar, particularly its moral grammar. The terminology utilized to speak of why, how, and whom we hold accountable for violations of the law is incoherent given the ancient conversion-based paradigm for addressing serious social misconduct. As a result, we are left without an antidote to some expression of violence as the only unifying principle in the various justifications offered for the practice of criminal detention.

It Is Wrong to Punish Anyone for Any Reason

The first chapter argued that violence is the default value of all justifications for criminal detention. This chapter then investigates retribution; deterrence; incapacitation, and, to some degree, rehabilitation to reveal this coercive mechanism always in play. It concentrates mostly upon an exposition and critique of the retributive position since its underlying perception of personhood is shared by most proponents of the other positions. It then maintains that the historical and moral antidote to the ontology of violence is provided by an approach to human malfeasance found in the penitential and monastic ethos of early Catholicism. It was there that the belief that no one needs to be punished to come to full personhood was given institutional basis not only in the sacrament of penance but in the moral and methodological guidelines of the monastic prison.

The State of Penal Ideology and Penal Affairs

This chapter explores the two metaethical errors upon which the current system of criminal justice is based: the lack of a life-affirming moral ontology and dualism. The chapter reveals that all philosophical foundations upon which the system is constructed are predicated upon subjective appropriations of reality that can do no other than lead to an emotivism between competing subjectivities that, in turn, can only be adjudicated by the threat or use of violence. The chapter then reviews contemporary scholarship on the penal state to underscore the contention that the only justification for incarceration that honors the dignity of the confined and trusts in their capacity to overcome alienation and violence without need of forcible intervention is conversion.