Volume 9 SPRING/SUMMER 2002 Numbers 1/2
CONTENTS
CRIME
AND PUNISHMENT: BALANCING SOCIETAL AND INDIVIDUAL ISSUES
About the Contributors
Preface:
Crime and Punishment
Robert S. Frey, M.A., Editor/Publisher, BRIDGES
ARTICLES
America
as a Killing State: On the Persistence of Capital Punishment in the
United States
Austin Sarat
Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought
Political Science
Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts (USA)
Choice
Theory, Utilitarianism, and Criminal Punishment
James W. Skeen
Florida (USA)
The Two
Infinites
Steven Carter
California State University, Bakersfield (USA)
How to
Reform a Serial Killer: The Buddhist Approach to Restorative Justice
David R. Loy
Professor, Faculty of International Studies
Bunkyo University (Japan)
SELECTED BOOK REVIEWS
Richard
Bauckham, ed., God Will Be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen
Moltmann
Art Spring
Anthony
Cunningham, The Heart of What Matter: The Role for Literature in Moral
Philosophy
Pauline Kaurin
Daniel
S. Greenberg, Science, Money, and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical
Erosion
Richard Isaacman
Lewis
E. Hahn, A Contextualistic Worldview
Andrea Croce Birch
Suzanne
Holland, Karen Lebacqz, and Laurie Zoloth, eds. The Human Embryonic
Stem Cell Debate: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy
Ingrid Shafer
Juan J.
Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes
Dovile Budryte
Daniel
C. Maguire, Sacred Choices: The Right to Contraception and Abortion
in Ten World Religions
Michael Gorman
John Polkinghorne
and Michael Welker, Faith in the Living God: A Dialogue
Rosamond Kilmer Spring
Jean Vanier,
Made for Happiness: Discovering the Meaning of Life with Aristotle
Art Spring
Edward
D. Zinbarg, Faith, Morals, and Money: What the World's Religions Tell
Us About Ethics in the Marketplace
Rosamond Kilmer Spring
BOOKS OF NOTE
Abstracts
What does the persistence of capital punishment mean for American law, politics, and culture? What impulses does state killing nurture in this nation's responses to grievous wrongs? What demands does it place on our legal institutions? How is the death penalty represented in our culture? This essay takes up these questions and argues that state killing damages America, calling into question the extent of the difference between state killing and the killing which everyone would like to stop, and in the process weakening not strengthening democratic political institutions. It leaves America in an angrier, less compassionate, more intolerant condition, more rather than less divided, further from, not closer to, solutions to our most pressing problems. While ending state killing would not be a cure in and of itself, doing so would allow Americans to focus more clearly on the task of dealing with those issues.
________________________________
There are many issues that must be considered when operating, or evaluating, a society. How, and how well a society accomplishes the task of providing for the welfare of its people tells us much about that society, or at least its ruling class. The issue considered in this paper is criminal punishment. How does a society deal with those who break its laws? What are the grounds upon which it makes its punishment, or no-punishment, decisions? Are these decisions pursued with only the offended in mind, or do they also consider the offender?
The utilitarian mindset of many who operate our criminal justice system is analyzed. Nigel Walker's book, Why Punish? is critiqued. Walker has a utilitarian mindset toward criminal punishment. The dangers of utilitarian decision-making are explored. It is argued that a theory of natural rights and natural justice needs to undergird all systems of legal punishment. One of the main components in a theory of natural rights and natural justice is a view of human nature. Choice theory is introduced as a valuable contributor to our understanding of human nature. The issue of how a people deals with those who offend and violate the law tells much about that people. Are they so focused on their own safety that rage and revenge infiltrate their utilitarian, deterrence-based decisions or are they concerned about doing right to both the offended and the offender. A good society requires a punishment system founded on the natural rights of individuals. Utilitarianism, at least Walkers' variety, is a threat to the making of a good society and cannot be trusted to guard natural human interests.
________________________________
David
R. Loy
This article considers how Buddhist perspectives on crime and punishment
support the contemporary movement toward restorative (in place of retributive)
justice. It begins by examining the two Pali suttas that most directly
address these issues: the Angulimala Sutta, about the reform of a serial
killer, and the Lion's Roar Sutta, about the responsibility of a ruler.
Then it looks at the Vinaya, which has many implications for our understanding
of motivation and reform, and finally at traditional Tibet to see how
its criminal justice system embodied these Buddhist perspectives. It
concludes with some reflections on why our present criminal justice
systems serve the purposes of the state better than the needs of offenders
and their victims.
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