Browsing by Subject "Mass incarceration"
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Item Embargo Death Work: Prison Chaplaincy, Karl Barth, and Practicing Life in Prison(2023) Jobe, Sarah C.This is a book about life-in-death work, what the Christian tradition has often called salvation or atonement. How does the life, arrest, trial, conviction, execution, and release from state-supervision of Jesus Christ enact the salvation of the cosmos. How does that one carceral life-in-death link up with life in the face of prison death today? I have sought to answer these questions by taking my body in and out of prison as a prison chaplain while conversing with other prison chaplains, theologian Karl Barth, and the biblical witness to Jesus Christ. In the tradition of theological ethnography, this work brings together theological and biblical reflection with data from a two-year, collaborative ethnography on current and former prison chaplains. This is the first nation-wide study of prison chaplaincy based on an interview protocol rather than a survey, and it provides a wealth of narratives on the complexities of prison chaplaincy, an understudied profession. Karl Barth serves as a conversation partner throughout because he enters the witness box as one who knows and writes the incarcerated Christ, has been arrested and convicted himself, and practiced prison chaplaincy as a volunteer chaplain at Basel Prison from 1954-1964.As a practical soteriology, this work describes how prison chaplains follow the arc of Jesus’ life and work. Chaplains follow Jesus’ incarnation in their ministry of presence, embodying the way that Jesus’ prophetic work threatens social divisions and death-dealing authorities. They receive the same death-threats that Jesus received and bear the impact of prisons in their bodies, being made sin for the sake of salvation. They stand with Jesus and others in carceral death, and they participate in Jesus’ resurrected life-after-death, sometimes while still in prison and sometimes having been freed from it. The architecture of this book follows that story line – the arc of Jesus’ incarnation, prophetic ministry, arrest, death, and resurrection – what Christians confess to be the arc of salvation. That salvific scaffolding is then filled up with the narratives of chaplains – historically, from within this study, and from my own professional experiences. The words of chaplains become the eyewitness accounts to life-in-death work, i.e., to the texture of salvation.
Item Open Access What Role Does The Black Church Play in Reducing recidivism(2022) christian, jerryAbstractThe correctional system in the United States has long demonstrated an unequal system that affects people of color, especially the Black male. This system has created a new form of slavery that continues to plague the Black male to find a place in the socalled land of the free and the brave. The prison pipeline created in the United States contributes to one out of three Black males being under some sort of supervision, probation, or parole in their lifetime. The problems on the inside of prison result in mental disorders, depression, anger, bitterness and a continue to destructive behavior. After incarceration, the challenges continue to plague the Black male when re-entering society. The Black male faces obstacles of employment, voting, housing, family, and adjustment. These barriers help contribute to recidivism. The majority who return to society have a high recidivism rate because of these challenges. This research dwells on the importance of the Black church regarding rehabilitation, along with family- and community. This research follows my own experience within this system and evidence of the role a church can play in reducing recidivism