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The Expanding Prison: The Crisis in Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives
The Expanding Prison: The Crisis in Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives. Cayley, D (1998).
Cayley notes that prisons, like all institutions that grow in size, reach a point where they frustrate their original intention. Their large size frustrates their purpose as institutions of correction. He cites national (Canadian) and international examples of how prisons currently work. We are social beings, Cayley reminds us, and prior to understanding ourselves as individuals, we have the common good at heart. For Cayley, justice is communal peace-making and he incorporates insights from critical thinkers whose notions are significant to prison reform and communal peace-making. Further, he suggests that a moral understanding of good and evil is necessary to render justice. He writes (p. 85) that "In a world without good, evil is secularized as crime." and "Justice without a sense of the good is darkened." Cayley's historical insights into the relationship between prison rehabilitation and Christianity ought to influence our thinking about the future direction of prison governance and the treatment of prisoners. The notion that 'truth as relational' (p. 323), which he attributes to Martin Buber, introduces a phenomenological way of thinking with respect to justice and peace-making. This understanding is at variance with the classical ideas derived from the thinking of Aristotle and Aquinas that currently support concepts of justice and peace-making. To my way of thinking Caley has made a significant contribution to the study of prison reform.
Allan Savage is Priest Chaplain to the Thunder Bay Regional Hospital, Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Posted by editor on September 30, 2003 10:08 AM