Religion and Incarceration in the U.S.
As of 2020, the United States had the highest rate of incarceration in the world, by far, with almost 2.3 million people in prison or jail. About 1 out of 140 Americans were incarcerated at any time and millions pass through correctional systems each year. The results have disproportionately impacted poor and disenfranchised communities (mostly communities of color). Although African Americans only make up 13% of the population, they comprise 40% of the population in prison or jail. Legal scholar and civil rights lawyer Michele Alexander has described the modern era of mass incarceration as “The New Jim Crow,” arguing that the current system is a rebirth of a caste-like system that relegates African Americans to a permanent second-class citizen status. To learn more about current state of incarceration in the U.S., view the Prison Policy Initiative Report from 2020.
Christianity, Race, and Mass Incarceration Lecture Panel
Additional Lecture Media
How did this state of affairs come about? And what role has and does religion play in the ways the U.S. approaches criminal justice?
Detainment vs. Rehabilitation: As the colonies developed in the beginning of the 18th Century, the earliest examples of incarceration were merely meant to detain criminals until their trial and sentencing, many of whom were charged in matters relating to a political or religious nature. Methods of reform and rehabilitation would arise later during the aftermath of the American Revolution, with emphasis on religious redemption and educational transformation.
How and why would events such as the Great Awakening and the American Revolution influence how religion, reform and rehabilitation entered the prison setting?
Religion and Incarceration in Early Philadelphia:
Walnut Street Jail, upon its opening in 1775, was a correctional facility primarily constructed for holding numerous criminals together in large rooms while upcoming trials were being arranged. Early reliance on prisoner punishment gradually shifted over the years from public to private, with emerging methods of isolation and labor used in response to petitions made by individuals within organizations such as the Pennsylvania Prison Society, known then as the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating Miseries of Public Prisons. Experimenting with more serious offenders in complete isolation as a method of reflection on the crimes they had committed, the system fell to controversy in the very end of the century, and suffered from overpopulation of the establishment. This prompted the idea and construction of a larger facility to house incarcerated men and women which focused more heavily on reform rather than simply detainment, thus giving birth to the Eastern State Penitentiary in 1829. Religious influence and structure impacted both facilities, as Sunday was reserved for no labor and sermons by ministers for the prisoners within the prison walls. See slideshow: Religion and Incarceration in Early Philadelphia
Pennsylvania vs. Auburn Systems:
Pennsylvania System:
Emerged from the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (later renamed the Pennsylvania Prison Society)
Based primarily on Quaker ideals, emphasizing solitary confinement at all times and prisoners have no contact with each other, preserving anonymity
First attempted at the Walnut Street Jail, the idea really took form at the opening of Eastern State Penitentiary in 1829
Architect John Haviland designed the prison with the idea of this new “separation system” in mind
Through isolation it was believed that inmates would spend time reflecting on past behaviors and repenting for them, without any contamination from outside influences
Bibles were provided by the Philadelphia Bible Society to every person incarcerated in Eastern State, and Sundays would feature sermons by ministers visiting the prison
Criticized for financial cost and subsequent mental/emotional issues that were emerging in inmates due to constant solitary confinement; abandoned the “separation system” in 1913
Auburn System:
Opened in 1816, the Auburn Prison in Auburn, New York was one of the earliest prisons in the state
In the early 1820s, reorganization of the facility’s methods stressed a Puritan belief that criminals were inherently bad, based on the notion of “Original Sin”
Rather than rely on isolation and repentance with the aid of religion, Auburn exhibited an emphasis on rehabilitation rather than reform
Prisoners maintained a strict code of silence, while during the day performing manual labor and returned to solitary confinement at night
Though prisoners had contact with one another, by enforcing silence at all times the idea was that inmates could not negatively influence each other through dialogue
Constant labor and strict codes to live by were meant to conform the convicts to the laws of society, thus discipline was an underlying theme that was aimed to be instilled in all that were incarcerated
Rather than try to harness the spirit, this system tried to break it
The Auburn System surpassed the Pennsylvania system as the 19th Century progressed, and the modern penal code in the United States can see aspects of both it and the Pennsylvania System enforced in large-scale prisons today
Education and Reform: Early examples of reform in locations such as Eastern State Penitentiary and Auburn Prison relied heavily on forced labor, strict discipline and religious influence to change the incarcerated individual. As prison systems progressed in the United States, education became more and more important in trying to tame the criminal mind and rehabilitate them well enough to possibly allow assimilation back into society. Zebulon Brockway was perhaps the first and most notable figure in prison education history, viewing criminal behavior as a mental illness of sorts. Developing a reward system for teaching inmates confined to prison environments, especially those of a younger age, Brockway set standards for education reform during his time working at Elmira State Reformatory in New York.
How did general education help to prepare incarcerated men and women for a return to society in ways that religion could not?
Religion and Incarceration In Recent Years: The United States is notable for its extreme level of mass incarceration, surpassing any other nation on the planet. Through the 20th Century as prisons reformed according to the times, the population of state and federal prisons saw a gradual increase. Factors such as Nixon’s “War on Drugs,” the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act passed under the Reagan Administration, and the 1994 Crime Bill passed under the Clinton Administration set forth a domino effect that saw incarcerations occur much more frequently. Race, gender and religion all became subject to prejudice as social stereotypes played into direct association with certain crimes. Religion in Prisons observed in 2011 from prison chaplains across the United States display statistics and graphs on the prominent religions of inmates, levels of religious extremism, and religious accommodation behind bars.
How would the increase in mass incarceration across the United States influence the hierarchy of different religious groups inside prison walls?
How would society on the outside of a prison affect living conditions on the inside?
Notable Figures:
Benjamin Rush: Famous Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, he was an early member of the Pennsylvania Prison Society and advocated against public labor as punishment for incarcerated criminals.
William White: Known as the first Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, he was also the first president of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, combining his Episcopalian background with prominent Quaker beliefs of the group. He also served as the first president of the Magdalen Society, a group oriented around the reform of female convicts.
John Haviland: Architect of Eastern State Penitentiary, he utilized gothic influence in the construction of the building which emulated church design, and built cells to endorse the idea of constant isolation that the inmates would be subjected to.
Charles Dickens: Famous British author and one of the harshest critics of Eastern State’s “separation system,” bringing to light the toll isolation takes on the prisoners and how mental illness is more of a probable outcome than repentance.
Zebulon Brockway: Pioneer in education reform within prisons, he took the idea of religious reform and steered it more towards teaching basic skills and lessons in order to educate criminals rather than simply rely on labor and isolation.
Reading and Resources:
Adamson, Christopher. "Evangelical Quakerism and the Early American Penitentiary Revisited: The Contributions of Thomas Eddy, Roberts Vaux, John Griscom, Stephen Grellet, Elisha Bates, and Isaac Hopper." Quaker History 90, no. 2 (2001): 35-58. www.jstor.org/stable/41947469.
Barnes, Harry Elmer. "The Criminal Codes and Penal Institutions of Colonial Pennsylvania." Bulletin of Friends' Historical Society of Philadelphia 11, no. 2 (1922): 68-84. www.jstor.org/stable/41945227.
Barnes, Harry Elmer. "The Historical Origin of the Prison System in America." Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 12, no. 1 (1921): 35-60. doi:10.2307/1133652.
Graber, Jennifer. "'"When Friends Had the Management It Was Entirely Different": Quakers and Calvinists in the Making of New York Prison Discipline." Quaker History 97, no. 2 (2008): 19-40. www.jstor.org/stable/41947656.
Roberts, Leonard H. "The Historic Roots of American Prison Reform: A Story of Progress and Failure." Journal of Correctional Education 36, no. 3 (1985): 106-09. Accessed July 8, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/41970789.
Schmid, Muriel. “The Eye of God: Religious Beliefs and Punishment in Early Nineteenth-Century Prison Reform.” Theology Today 59, no. 4 (2003): 546-558.
Thibaut, Jacqueline. “”To Pave the Way to Penitence”: Prisoners and Discipline at Eastern State Penitentiary 1829-1835.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 106, no. 2 (April 1982): 187-222.
Vlasblom, David. "Islam in Early Modern Quaker Experience and Writing." Quaker History 100, no. 1 (2011): 1-21. www.jstor.org/stable/41947703.
Interview with Matthew Potts: Christianity, Race, and Mass Incarceration, Harvard Divinity School, 2017.
Carceral Hermeneutics: Discovering the Bible in Prison and Prison in the Bible
by Sarah Jobe
The Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
This essay introduces the concept of “carceral hermeneutics,” the art of interpreting Scripture from within prisons as, or alongside, incarcerated persons. Reading the Bible in prison reframes the Bible as a whole, highlighting how the original sites of textual production were frequently sites of exile, prison, confinement, and control. Drawing on the work of Lauren F. Winner, the author explores the “characteristic damages” of reading the Bible without attention to the carceral and suggests that physically re-locating the task of biblical interpretation can unmask interpretative damage and reveal alternative, life-giving readings. The essay concludes with an extended example, showing how the idea of cruciformity is a characteristically damaged reading that extracts Jesus’ execution from its carceral context. Carceral hermeneutics surfaces a Gospel counter-narrative in which Jesus flees violence and opts for his own safety. Jesus as a refugee (Matt 2), a fugitive (Matt 4:12–17), and a victim escaping violence (Luke 4:14–30) stand alongside Jesus as an executed person to offer a wider range of options for a “christoformity” in which people can image God while fleeing from violence in order to preserve their own lives and freedom.
“The Hebrew Bible includes stories of imprisonment at key moments. The Joseph cycle, the longest continuous narrative in Genesis, tells the story of a leader who experiences both enslavement and imprisonment in his rise to power in Egypt (Gen 37–50). Samson, the leader of Israel given the most chapters in the book of Judges, is imprisoned and escapes miraculously with God’s help (Judg 15). While prison is a theme in all of the major prophets, the character of Jeremiah spends more than half of his prophetic ministry in prison, experiencing everything from house arrest to a form of solitary confinement that he believes will kill him (Jer 37–40). Additionally, prisons are not the only carceral contexts included in Scripture. In this article, I will use “carceral” as an adjective meaning “of or relating to prisons,” but I will also use the term more broadly to indicate a wider range of experiences marked by state-sponsored control of, and violence against, both individual bodies and the social body.
Under this broader understanding of carceral, the enslavement and exile of the people of Israel are understood to be carceral. Enslavement and exile are experiences of bodily control and forced relocation away from one’s home. Like all carceral contexts, enslavement and exile function through state-sponsored control of, and violence against, individual bodies and the social body. In enslavement and exile, Israel’s history became marked by racialized violence, food insecurity, and sexual violence, as was and is still the case for many incarcerated people(s). While there is a growing body of literature that interprets the exile through the lenses of trauma and forced migration (Smith-Christopher 2002; Ahn 2010; Kelle et al. 2011), there is little recognition of how widely carceral terms, carceral spaces, and carceral practices constitute the grammar and geography of exilic books. At least nine books of the Bible could be considered to be “about” the Babylonian exile, and the Torah is widely understood to have been redacted in that context.
Given the carceral resonances of exile, it is no wonder that one finds the favored protagonists of these texts in various states of flight. The refugee, the nomad, the fugitive, the rebel leader, the slave, the concubine, and the political prisoner are all characters whose movements are glossed with varying degrees of criminality. Hagar, the first woman to name God, does so as she escapes violence in her home (Gen 16 and 21). Exodus paints Moses as refugee become royal (Exod 2:1–10), as a fugitive murderer fleeing capital charges (Exod 2:11–15), and as a rebel leader in various states of flight and wandering even as he leads (Exod 3–19). David, Israel’s archetypal king, begins his rule in flight from Saul’s administration (1 Sam 18–31). Both the Psalmist and Isaiah implicate the character of God as both a jailer who imprisons people and as the one who frees people from prison (Psa 66:11, 142:7; Isa 24:22, 42:7). The post-exilic novellas of Esther and Daniel portray their major characters navigating everything from daily food and clothing controls to genocide, the micro- and macro-aggressions of living as a captive people.
The carceral and the biblical are inextricably bound to one another. Even by conservative calculations, twenty-four of sixty-six biblical books are written from prison, from exile, or about prison and exile. But even given the widespread nature of the carceral in the biblical, I do not believe that I would have ever noticed these dynamics if I had not read the Bible from inside of America’s prisons.”
“Jesus’ execution is, in many ways, at the heart of the Christian faith. But understanding Jesus’ execution to be voluntary self-sacrifice is an interpretation that ignores Jesus’ carceral context. One does not describe men serving time on death row as voluntarily sacrificing their lives. In order to say such a thing of Jesus, one must ignore that he was a convicted criminal sentenced to state execution. No one in prison would ever suggest that someone volunteer to be strapped to a chair for lethal injection.
The more time I spent in prison, the less sense the ethical imperative to self-sacrifice as an emulation of Jesus’ execution made to me. I started to learn a different logic—a logic that said that getting out of prison is always a good thing. In the community where I read the Bible, if someone shares during testimony time that her sentence has been reduced, we all get up and cheer. If someone is granted parole, we all get up and cheer. During a Stations of the Cross service, when someone told the story of how she started her sentence on death row, we all shook our heads with dismay, and when she got to the part in the story where her sentence got commuted from death to life, we all got up and cheered. In this tradition of prison testimony, after the cheering, the delivered person often gives a word of encouragement to the rest of us—something along the lines of, “If God can do it for me, God can do it for you.”
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