Faith-Based Rehabilitation: Seeking Redemption Behind Bars

Our current model of prisons is a fairly modern invention without any analogies in world history. In the colonial era, most crimes were seen as sins, and imprisonment as we know it today was almost nonexistent. Early colonial towns in New England had populations of sometimes fewer than 1,000 inhabitants. Institutionalized punishment was too expensive, so when punishment occurred, it was swift and immediate. Transgressors were usually known members of the community, and almost everyone belonged to the church. Given this proximity to others, the punishment most befitting the crime was humiliation through time in stockades or banishment from the community. Being tarred and feathered was also a colonial punishment, and the women and men accused in the Salem witch trials of 1692 were hanged. Colonial models of law and justice were steeped in Calvinist doctrine. John Calvin, the 16th-century theologian, argued in Institutes of the Christian Religion that all humans were inherently wicked and sinful. Since humans were condemned from birth, the only function of punishment was deterrence.