Issue: July/August 2013: Criminal Justice – Annual Book Review Issue

Volume 13 Number 4

Editor’s Introduction

Currently, the Recommended and Proposed Social Statement on Criminal Justice is circulating through the church. At the Churchwide Assembly this fall, members will have the opportunity to vote on its adoption. In recognition of the important conversations about this topic in the church, this annual book review issue of JLE features reviews of several texts […]

Review of Good Punishment? Christian Moral Practice and U.S. Imprisonment (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008).

[1] In her recent and important book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness (reviewed in this issue), attorney Michelle Alexander calls for a movement on par with the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century in order to overturn the damage caused by the unprecedented incarceration of large portions of […]

A Review of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, New York: New Press, 2010.

​[1] The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world; more people are incarcerated in this country, as a percentage of the population, than in any other nation.[1] The prison population in the U.S. has quadrupled since 1980.[2] Currently, 2.2 million people are incarcerated in prisons and jails in the U.S.[3] In terms […]

Review of Compassionate Justice: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue with Two Gospel Parables on Law, Crime, and Restorative Justice. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012.

[1] The very heart of Christopher Marshall’s latest book, Compassionate Justice, explores two beloved parables in which the main characters are “moved by compassion” to show mercy and do justice. As with Beyond Retribution, Marshall eloquently juxtaposes detailed exegesis with insight into the theory and rich religious underpinnings of restorative justice in modern legal systems. […]

Response to Professor Levad’s Review of Good Punishment?

[1] Whenever an author’s work is reviewed by an academic peer, a measure of collegial respect and thanks should be registered. This is so because the art of the book review (when offered with integrity, sincerity and a good critical eye) advances important discussions and debates related to human survival, justice seeking and flourishing. I […]

Review of Alex Mikulich, Laurie Cassidy, and Margaret Pfeil, The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 219 pp.

[1] The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration presents a rare, unflinching, and provocative confrontation of White Catholic complicity in the contemporary U.S. scourge of mass incarceration. Catholic theologians Alex Mikulich, Laurie Cassidy, and Margaret Pfeil (after an incisive foreword written by Sister Helen Prejean of Dead Man Walking fame) offer with this text […]