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Volokh on the Efficacy of Faith-Based Prisons

Sasha Volokh has been writing a series of deeply interesting and thoughtful articles on the phenomenon of the faith-based prison, focusing especially on the effectiveness of faith-based prisons in reducing recidivism and in other ways.  Readers interested in the subject will find much to admire in Sasha’s careful and provocative work: see here and here.  For criticism of Sasha’s views, see this short reply by Giovanna Shay. 

For my own take on faith-based prisons — which focuses neither on empirical nor constitutional questions, but instead on the conceptual position, historical and contemporary, of (religious) penance in punishment theory — see this piece.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Call for Papers: Reframing Punishment at Oxford

The following is a call for papers for an interesting looking conference at Oxford in September dealing with new approaches to thinking about punishment.  I reproduce it here because one of the concepts it raises is religious and/or spiritual punishment.  Interested parties should contact shs@inter-disciplinary.net.  

The concept of punishment has a long history and diverse cultural, social and criminological meanings.  Research and debate is often focused on the offender, the offence, the state and legal codification.  In contrast, this project seeks to re-frame these debates in order to combine the insights they produce with broader cultural meanings, social representations and ritualistic or other activities.  Therefore, the aim of the project is to develop different ways of understanding the penetration and complexity of shared understandings of punishment from a variety of perspectives, approaches and practitioner experiences.  Reframing the debate might be done through papers aimed at the personal or social levels.  We encourage unique approaches to punishment in terms of boundary control, whether it is control of evil, the politically subversive, the economically disruptive, or punishment in pursuit of system stability or marginalisation of liminality.   Papers might also cover punishment issues relating to defining the contours of disgust, desire, dread, or the abject.  They may even consider the operation and consequences of both wrongdoing and various forms of societal/social punishment.  Accordingly the project welcomes papers, work-in-progress and pre-formed panels from diverse areas of study such as the humanities, social sciences, business, science, law schools and the arts, as well as practitioners.

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Koritansky ed., “The Philosophy of Punishment and the History of Political Thought”

Another superb-looking book about the intellectual history of punishment edited by Peter Karl Koritansky.  The book is The Philosophy of Punishment and the History of Political Thought (U. Missouri Press 2011).  Professor Koritansky’s fine volume on Aquinas’s thought about punishment is noted here.  The publisher’s description follows.

What does the institution of punishment look like in an ideal political system? Is punishment merely an exercise of violence of the strong against the weak? And what does the phenomenon of revealed religion add to the understanding of punishment? These are some of the many questions contemplated in The Philosophy of Punishment and the History of Political Thought, which provides a provocative exploration of the contributions of nine major thinkers and traditions regarding the question of punitive justice.
 
For the last half century, the philosophical debates over punishment have been deadlocked at two schools of thought: Utilitarianism and Retributivism. In his introduction, Koritansky provides an overview of the stymied debate by analyzing H. L. A. Hart’s argument for a philosophy unifying the theories of Utilitarianism and Retributivism. While Koritansky allows that both theories have contributed substantially to the contemporary understanding of punishment, he points out that Hart’s lack of success in combining these theories proves that both are less than ideal. From this starting point, Koritansky urges transcendence from these two theories in order to respond to new developments and circumstances surrounding the enactment of punishment today.
 
Conveniently divided into three sections, the book explores pagan and Christian premodern thought; early modern thought, culminating in chapters on Kant and classic Utilitarianism; and postmodern thought as exemplified in the theories of Nietzsche and Foucault. In all, the essays probe the work of Plato, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, Cesere Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault.
 
These essays devoted to the philosophy of punishment from the perspective of political thought delve deep into key contributions from thinkers of all eras to help further debates on punishment, provide the history of political thought in order to trace changes and effects on future theories, as well as expose the roots of the two prevailing schools of thought. This collection will engage all social scientists interested in the issue of punishment and energize the ongoing debate surrounding this complex issue.
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Koritansky’s “Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment”

I am very excited to read this new book by Peter Karl Koritansky (University of Prince Edward Island), Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment (CUA Press 2011).  My own view is that punishment theory and punishment policy might greatly benefit from a historical turn, rediscovering (or, often enough, discovering for the first time) the richness and depth of perspectives on punishment which have, for one reason or another, been forgotten in the historical firmament or perhaps even ignored altogether.  Thomas Aquinas is neither forgotten nor ignored, but this is one of the only full-length book treatments of his thought about punishment of which I am aware, and it is certainly the only one which connects directly to the present debate about punishment theory and punishment practice today.  Cool.  The publisher’s description follows.  — MOD

Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment explores how Aquinas’s understandings of natural law and the common good apply to the contemporary philosophical discussion of punitive justice. It is the first book-length study to consider this question in decades, and the only book that confronts modern views of the topic.

Peter Karl Koritansky presents Thomas Aquinas’s theory of punishment as an alternative to the leading schools of thought that have dominated the philosophical landscape in recent times, namely, utilitarianism and retributivism. After carefully examining each one and tracing its roots back to Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham, Koritansky concludes that neither approach to punitive justice is able to provide a philosophically compelling justification for the institution of punishment. He explains how St. Thomas approaches the same philosophical questions from a markedly different set of assumptions rooted in his theory of natural law and his understanding of the common good.

Not without its own difficulties, Aquinas’s approach offers a rationale and justification of punishment that is, Koritansky argues, much more humane, realistic, and compelling than either contemporary school is able to provide. Koritansky distinguishes his reading of the Angelic Doctor from that of other interpreters who tend to conflate Aquinas’s teaching with various aspects of recent thought. A final chapter considers the death penalty in John Paul II’s Gospel of Life and debates whether current Catholic teaching about the death penalty conflicts with Aquinas’s arguments in favor of the death penalty.

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The Retributivist Tradition and Its Future: A Conference at St. John’s on November 4

If you are in or about New York City on November 4, please consider attending The Retributivist Tradition And Its Future at St. John’s University School of Law.  The conference will take up many of the chapters in Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy (Mark D. White, ed., 2011).  My own small contribution to the conference, which I’m still chewing over, might be titled something like, “The Retributivst Tradition As Its Future.”

The conference description follows and the program is after the jump.  Hope you can make it. 

Retributivism as a justification of punishment is a very old idea, with sources in ancient codes of religious law and morality. After a period of dormancy in the 20th century, retributivism is now ascendant again as a theory of punishment, as scholars have reinterpreted the commitment to just desert in novel and provocative ways.

This conference, The Retributivist Tradition and Its Future, brings together leading thinkers in punishment theory to reflect on retributivism’s past and present, with an eye toward what retributivism and punishment theory generally might become. Many of the speakers are also contributors to the recently published volume, Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy (Mark D. White, ed., OUP 2011), which will also be considered at the conference.

Read more

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Religion and (Capital) Punishment

Here’s a post by David Gibson which links to a piece by Christopher Hitchens, which in turn claims (in his usual free-wheeling style) that the reason that the United States continues to permit capital punishment is because of the country’s religiosity.  Gibson disputes the assertion by citing some numbers from other countries that aren’t particularly religious, but his point seems to be that whether religion and capital punishment are linked will depend on which religion one is talking about.

I suppose that’s true, but I think it may miss something much larger.  The most fundamental reason (historically, at least, though not only that) to punish people is retributivist — that those who commit crimes are morally culpable and so deserve punishment.  The contemporary rarification of punishment theory tends to obscure the fact that ideas of retribution are ancient and have at least a large part of their historical root in religious traditions and concepts — especially the monotheistic religious traditions which, again historically, have been most prominent.  So it should not be surprising that there is a connection between religious traditions and capital punishment, since there is a much broader and deeper connection between religion and the prototypical justification of punishment.   — MOD