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Human zoo
Brian Cohn explains what’s wrong with jail
07.07.2003

...The modern idea of prison has at its root an Enlightenment belief in rehabilitation, faith in the fundamental goodness of human nature that society has somehow managed to screw up. To remedy the problem, the offender simply needs a little reeducation time—oh, say 30 or 40 years or so—to be taught that you shouldn’t rob a bank or kill someone. Of course, the average conservative of our day will jump up and shout, "No way, you loony jarhead. Prison is punishment. I don’t believe in all that rehab, namby-pamby stuff. They need to be locked up to pay for their crimes." Pay whom? The offended party—or the state?

The idea of restitution is not completely alien to our justice system; criminals today are still ordered to pay damages to those they've wronged, but all too often it's simply an afterthought. The real "punishment" is when those who have violated the law have to "pay their debt to society" and serve their time in a holding pen for a few years, even decades. But how in the name of Patrick Henry does going to prison somehow make the offended party whole?

The answer is that in our country today, the state considers itself the primary aggrieved and wronged party in every crime that is committed. The state is then made whole by taking free slave labor from people for a stint. This is somehow considered more humane than those harsh biblical laws that are the foundation of Western culture and government.

The biblical view of lawbreaking is of course, twofold: The only possible parties that can be wronged are God and another human being. The reason God required restitution or retribution in his law was that humans were made in his image. To violate or harm another person was to do violence to God's image bearers; you can't exactly do much moral or physical harm to a lump of Jell-o, or an impersonal organization like government.

The requirement for the wronged party to be made whole was the basis for all of biblical law....