Time for prison reform?

States are so burdened by their debts and unmeetable obligations to state pensioners and welfare recipients that they have begun to release many inmates in their prisons. As the recession intensifies, California is a noted example of an IOU-saddled state emptying prisons which it is unable to keep up. Many people in this institutional offsloughing will become homeless. Some will end up penniless in Chattanooga, maybe even with us.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press carried a story about how prison releases are raising safety concerns among members of the public. In reading such accounts, Christians should ask this question: Is this not a good time

to re-evaluate the very idea of prisons? Penitentiaries have held sway in the United States since the early 1800s? Does the word of God have an alternate plan for the civil sphere, which is charged with suppressing evil and encouraging good? Have not state penal systems forgotten their duty to bring about restitution and restoration to victims vs. strictly punitive packing away of convicts in massive, crime-infested cellblock wings?

If nothing else, economic distress gives Americans occasion to consider whether such a tradition in which their nation is the global leader is true and just to taxpayers, crime victims and offenders. Read the story in the Times Free Press.