Justice That Restores,
Charles W. Colson, Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2001; 172 pages.
by Wayne Northey
Charles Colson
explains that the seeds for this book were sewn while preparing for a series of
lectures on criminal justice in England.
“I needed to write a book that would
help American policy makers and people who work in our country’s criminal
justice system to think through their positions, policies, and practices (p.
x).”
Colson states two
premises giving rise to this publication.
The first is: “The criminal justice system, which is absolutely
crucial if government is to carry out its first duty – the preservation of
order – urgently needs reform (p. vii).”
The second is: “Our ideas and philosophies of criminal justice can no
longer be considered in a vacuum (p. viii).” These premises inform the four parts of the
book.
Part 1, “The Basis
for a Just Society”, presents some sobering statistics about the
exponential
growth of America’s
prison population in recent years.
Colson also indicates that “crimes” have changed into ever more
vicious,
senseless, and perverse acts, often with no motives connecting to the
specific
victims. He provides a litany of
randomly selected illustrative horrors.
He proceeds to discuss what is justice, and the importance of natural
law, which Colson claims references to biblical revelation. Over
against “biblically based” natural law
there has been a process of erosion of this as foundation for law in
Western history. He concludes Part I with, “If restorative
justice is to prevail, the first task ahead of us is to restore the
authority
of the law itself. Without it, no
criminal justice system can be fairly administered. Without it, no
society can survive (p. 41).”
Part 2 discusses
“The Roots of Crime”. Colson argues for
the traditional doctrine of original sin as the explanation for crime. In the process, he critiques “utopianism”,
whereby people are not held accountable for the choices they have made. The consequences of this bad “anthropology”
are a fourfold erosion of personal responsibility, coarsening of crimes,
dehumanization of the individual, and compounding of evil. He discusses each of these in some
detail. Colson concludes this section
with: “Restoration of justice is impossible without restoration of good
anthropology… [T]he true cause of
crime… is not environment or poverty but wrong moral choices. The truth is, we are not deprived, we are
depraved (p. 74).”
Part 3, “Redemption”
looks at the “Moral Roots of Crime”. “So
what is the cause of crime? It turns out
the Bible was right all along. Humans
are responsible for sin and evil (p. 79).”
Along the way, he indicates that the lack of large scale religious
training in American society, a training of Christian virtues, has significantly
created the monstrous problems with crime we face today. He writes, “So this brings us to the crucial
question perhaps of this entire book: What can be done to bring about virtue in
individuals as they make moral choices (p. 88)?” His answer is personal conversion to
Christ. To get to that, he briefly
examines other- and non-religious answers.
He points both to studies and stories that underscore a christocentric conclusion. In particular, he calls for the moral
transformation of the American family as the place to start. He calls also for the creation of “community
cohesion” through the mobilization of America’s churches to re-establish
virtue in its citizens. He concludes
this section with the words, “That reality, the reality of the gospel, is the only
life-transforming, indeed culture-transforming power. In that is the answer not just to crime but
also to life’s greatest dilemma (p. 109).”
Part 4, “Justice
That Restores”, finally delivers on the book’s title. Colson uses other terms such as “relational”
and “transformative” to describe this kind of justice as well. He underscores that “Crime is the Community’s
Business”, and proceeds to describe a range of community options, including
prevention programs, “Christian” prisons as operated by Prison Fellowship (the
worldwide organization founded by Colson), a variety of reintegration programs,
and programs that bring healing to victims.
The author concludes with further discussion of what Christian
“transformation” means in today’s culture.
The book’s final statement is, “… the time is at hand to turn to what
may seem a new and radical model but is actually an old and well-proven one:
justice that restores (p. 159).”
This book is an
avowed attempt to set the issues of crime, punishment, and justice in a
comprehensive historical and cultural context.
It lacks however the well-researched erudition of his colleagues’ Restoring
Justice (Anderson Publishing Company, 1997), and the theological acumen of
Chris Marshall’s Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice,
Crime, and Punishment (Eerdmans, 2001).
Colson’s book has its good moments, in particular when Colson turns in
Part 4 to practical descriptions of Restorative Justice initiatives and many of
his points are valid. His numerous
stories, from a wealth of personal experience, are inspirational and
heart-warming. He also sources some good
research material.
The book makes
repeated unsubstantiated statements and assumptions however, and serves up many
broad generalizations the reader is expected already to know and accept. Colson
claims to see the woods by raising at the outset what he terms “Foundational
Questions (p. 11)”. Regrettably, in this
reviewer’s opinion, he inadequately looks past the trees. There is “not enough”, in the repeated phrase
of activist Ruth Morris. I shall mention
two significant examples.
First, there is
Colson’s undefined use of the term “crime” itself, and the basic issue of who
commits “crime”. What would Colson say
of the classic Canadian publication by Thomas Gabor, ‘Everybody Does It!’:
Crime By the Public (University of Toronto Press, 1994), which demonstrates
from worldwide studies that Western
democracies such as Canada and the United States are largely made up of
“opportunistic repeat offenders” – approximately 90% of the population –
including law enforcers and elected officialdom? (“There is no one righteous, not even one”
could have been the book’s subtitle.)
Further, Colson provides for us a litany of horrific crimes to demonstrate
how “(street) crime” currently is spinning out of control. He thereby shows a simplistic,
individualistic, politically conservative bias that street crime is the only
kind legitimately to concern Americans.
But evidence is readily accessible for the massive depredations of
corporate crime in North America and
worldwide. (I need only mention
Enron.) The billions stolen, large
numbers of victims annually, and great environmental devastation, make
collective street crime in America
seem tame by comparison. (See Section
III and the various bibliographies of Ruth Morris’ The Case for Penal
Abolition, Canadian Scholars’ Press (2000) for example. The literature abounds.) Why does Colson not even allude to this?
Second, Colson makes
no connection between crime in America, and the crimes of what American
theologian Mark Taylor calls “Lockdown America”, an “American Empire” in
pursuit of a domestic and worldwide imposed Pax Americana as
(economically) conquest driven as ancient Rome (The Executed God: The Way of
the Cross in Lockdown America, Fortress, 2001). Taylor,
unlike Colson, connects the burgeoning “prison industrial complex” (what Nils
Christie called “crime control as industry” in a masterful book by that title
(Routledge, 1995) ) to the massive “military industrial complex” headed by the
Pentagon. Taylor
says: “The fusion of our nation’s punishment regime at home with a military
regime abroad was dramatically signalled in 2001 by the rise of George W. Bush
from chief executioner among U.S.
governors to chief executive commanding the U.S. military forces that guard
transnational business interests (p. xvi).”
The vast criminality of both “complexes” is also well documented. (See for example, A Sin Against the
Future: Imprisonment in the World, Vivien Stern, Northeastern University
Press, 1998; and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s
Only Superpower, William Blum, Common Courage
Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000.) Why has Colson absolutely nothing to say about
these kinds of worldwide, organized criminal organizations? Can Colson, former conservative politician,
though Christian, possibly be influenced by political bias and not just the
Bible in his cultural analysis?
Colson further and
rightly specifically alludes to the way in which young people are increasingly
desensitized across America
through violent video games to commit cold-blooded murder without
compunction. He then readily
acknowledges that contemporary American military training employs similar
methods, but says reassuringly: “The difference, of course, is that soldiers
absorb this training in a moral context… (p. 10)” And then he moves on, without apparently
batting an eye! (For starters, why did
Colson not at least adduce the chilling research conducted and widely
disseminated by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman?
See his website: http://www.killology.com/,
and his book: On
Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Little, Brown and Co, 1995.)
Further, is this not
the very issue of the New Testament moral witness, that is “univocal” against
killing (see Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament,
Fortress, 1996, Chapter 14), epitomized in Jesus’ clarion command: “Love your
enemies.”? So when the American military
“Timothy McVeighish” killed in excess of 6,000 innocent Afghani civilians in
its air war on terrorism, as well as tens of thousands more combatants, and
multiplied thousands of civilians and combatants again recently in Iraq; or
“nuked” in 1945 120,000 innocent Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
and slaughters thousands of innocents worldwide through American interventions
since World War II, are these cold-blooded horrors also not moral issues of
“crimes against humanity”? (And the most
obvious reason that America
totally boycotts the recently established International Court).
Are the above not
murderous acts of violence that model and elicit imitation by America’s
peoples as surely as violent video games?
Killing Hope: U.S.
Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by American journalist
William Blum (Black Rose Books, 1998) is a 457-page litany of such violent
crimes by America, which in
a more recent book as mentioned is consequently dubbed the ultimate Rogue State. Blum writes, “What if all the nice,
clean-cut, wholesome American boys who dropped an infinite tonnage of bombs, on
a dozen different countries, on people they knew nothing about – characters in
a video game – had to come down to earth and look upon and smell the burning
flesh (p. 1)?” And this kind of wanton
carnage, blessed by Colson (apparently) and certainly by most major Evangelical
leaders from Billy Graham on down in the United States, is not crime, is
“justified” in fact, because willed by the nation (and hence by God in a
perverse reading of Romans 13 worthy of Nazi Germany)? And therefore, by divine alchemy perhaps,
worldwide US
violence practised daily (if we only care to know[1])
is exempt both from the category of “crime (against humanity)”, and wide imitation
by the world public, not least other peoples and nations?
The book has some
things to offer. But given its
unfortunate American cultural captivity, it is sadly and sorely inadequate to
the task, amazingly naïve about the true depth and breadth of violence in
today’s world, hence “not enough”, according to its own stated intention, of
calling us to a cosmic biblical vision of “justice that restores”. “For God so loved the world”! –
one needs to remind Colson and a host of idolatrous American Evangelical
leadership.
[1] “The former apartheid
cabinet member Leon Wessels was closer to the mark when he said that they had
not wanted to know [about apartheid’s horrors], for there were those who tried
to alert them (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness,
p. 269).”