Book Review: Religious Faith in Correctional Contexts

Abstract

As homo sociologicus, we live in an extremely interactive society which greatly relies on predictable and expectable master patterns of human behaviors. Numerous academics have explored breaches in anticipated behavioral patterns and have suggested methods of how to deal with them. A modern government aims to decrease abstruse, belligerent social disturbances mainly based on legal sanctions, primarily incarceration; however, we are without perfect solutions despite those tremendous efforts and investments. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) data show that the number of inmates in US state and federal prisons increased again in 2013 after a 3-year decline in the prison population since 2010 (Carson 2014). As Robert Martinson’s ‘‘nothing works (1974)’’ doctrine casts its dark shadow, we have experienced a breakdown of the criminal justice system in terms of incarceration and recidivism rates. To complicate matters further, recent economic downturns have fed a ‘‘more with less’’ philosophy in governments. This neo-liberal philosophy stimulated the criminal justice market, and we have seen the appearance of private prisons. The Bureau of Justice Assistance started the Justice Reinvestment Initiative in 2006 to address these budgetary concerns (Alarid and Reichel 2013). As a part of the result, most governments have introduced various intermediate sanctions to decrease incarceration rates and adopt a wide range of cost effective rehabilitation programs to decrease recidivism. Here faith-based rehabilitation programs found a niche. Kerley suggests that a faith-based program can be a cost-effective option for inmates’ rehabilitation. Having planned to pave an empirical road for a faith-based rehabilitation program in correctional facilities, Kerley collected data by