Is the Department of Corrections Really Correcting?
Just as the Christian can either accept grace or reject it, so can the Christian community act in ways that foster this acceptance or hinder it. Grace builds on nature, both of the person and the group. Early prison systems reflected this belief. The root of the word “penitentiary” is penitent. The founding idea of the penal institution was to help inmates become penitential about their illicit behavior. It is appropriate, therefore to ask if our current approach to crime fosters the work of grace in the individual wrongdoer. The fact that 50 percent of those who are paroled will end up back in prison5 and one-third of all Wisconsin violent criminals who were tracked in the 1980s committed a new crime and were sent back to prison6 would seem to indicate that prisoners are not learning what they need in order to live lawfully once they are released on parole. The ineffectiveness of prison rehabilitation, and a lack of adequate funding for proper supervision of people on probation and pa
