Cultural Conservatism and Prison Reform

I wrote this email to my friend Deal Hudson in response to his outstanding op-ed at Catholic.org this morning entitled "Why Social Conservatives Should Become Cultural Conservatives".  This is far from a comprehensive response:  I simply immediately saw and applied his point.  You can see his response here. -- Rod

by Rod D. Martin
March 7, 2014

Deal,

You just rang all my bells.

One place we should start:  prison reform. The Bible does not institute prison: it requires restitution, not to the state but to the victim. I certainly support prison for violent offenders, and I have no issue with appropriate fines -- I appreciate that one can commit an offense against the people as a whole -- but the principle of restitution to victims has been largely lost, however much it's coming back in certain limited ways, and we have a duty to our Lawgiver and King if to no one else.

In fact, we have a duty to plenty of folks. We have the biggest prison population in the world, mostly nonviolent. How can we…