My Brother's Keeper
The Police State
Incarceration
The American criminal justice system, particularly the prison system, is a for-profit corporate structure designed to convict and incarcerate as many people as it can for as long as possible. It generates income for government agencies, corporate officers, and assorted stakeholders (e.g., prisons, criminal lawyers, and police departments, et al.). All one needs to prove this true is to follow the money. American mass incarceration cost the taxpayer $182 bn. annually: government incarceration $80.7 bn., private incarceration $3.9 bn, criminal policing $63.2 bn., criminal law $29 bn., prison employees $38.4 bn., health care $12.3 bn., etc.[1] Money is not inherently evil; the love of money is (1 Tim 6:10).[2] During the thirty-year period bridging two centuries (1982-2012) imprisonment expenditures increased 310% with over 4,000 companies profiting from the incarceration of American citizens.[3]
Justice For All
In their book An Introduction to Biblical Ethics (2014), McQuilkin and Copan advocate expanding monetary fines and property confiscation to avoid imprisonment for first offenders.[4] A process like that of Pope Leo X’s indulgence system. The only difference is that instead of Tetzel’s salesmanship luring sinners in, the state assumes the role of blackmailer, putting a price on one’s freedom. Rather than recognizing the financial motivation driving the American imprisonment of its citizenry and offering a Christian solution, the authors favor enabling the prison industry further. The unlawful imprisonment, taxation, and confiscation of property violate God’s law and Articles VI through X of the American Bill of Rights.[5]
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.[6]
McQuilkin and Copan discuss alternative punishments like retributive justice, deprivation of rights, exile, and even physical punishment, all of which prove inadequate.
The Way, The Truth, The Life
Christians, as God’s ambassadors, affect the lost world through the example of their lives. Jesus’s supernatural renewal of the believer’s mind and His miraculous transformation of their life become the beacon that guides God’s people home. The notion that Christianity will overcome the world, drug crime, and achieve a utopian society is not biblical. God will create a new heaven and earth, dwell among His people, wipe away all their tears, and do away with all mourning, death and pain according to His will (Rev. 21:1-4). McQuilkin and Copan are correct in pointing out the Church’s role in promoting justice, morality, and mercy. Christians are called to care for widows, orphans, prisoners, and the indigent, promoting a just and merciful society (Matt 29:35-40; Heb 13:3; James 1:27).[7] The authors misuse the noun democracy to characterize the American Constitutional Republic form of governance. They tread close to a works-based salvation promoting social justice reform and an authoritarian state, empowered by its citizens reporting suspected crimes and suspicious activities of their neighbors.[8] Man’s quest for a utopian culture leads to oppressive totalitarian regimes and crushing oppression. The unprecedented growth of the American prison population is not only a failure of the Church to confront moral depravity, including minor drug use, wherever and whenever it appears, but is also the individual Christians’ failure to proclaim there is only one way, truth, and life (John 14:6).
Love People | Do Kind Things | Teach Truth
[1] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/money.html: Accessed 11/28/2022.
[2] Unless otherwise noted all biblical references are English Standard Version (Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publisher, 2001).
[3] Prisonpolicy.org: 11/28/2022.
[4] Robertson McQuilkin and Paul Copan, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics: Walking in the Way of Wisdom, Third edition. (IVP, 2014), 437.
[5] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript: Accessed 11/28/2022.
[6] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript#: Accessed 11/28/2022.
[7] McQuilkin and Copan, “An Introduction to Biblical Ethics,” 441.
[8] Ibid., 442-43.
I’ve recently had this brought up and agree, the Biblical view of justice reigns supreme. This should be pushed further. You never know what can happen.