by TJ Gorringe. London:SPCK.  ISBN 0-281 05652-8 pbk.

Religiously motivated people have on the whole been better at helping prisoners during or after incarceration than at campaigning for fewer to be sent there in the first place.  Tim Gorringe argues that it is time to shift the balance.  Although the title is ‘Crime’, he also explores what we should do about it.  He goes back to first principles, examining the role of law in society, the relation of criminal justice to social justice, the concept of crime, and the (mis)uses of prison.  He puts forward a model based instead on justice and reconciliation, and calls for the civil community, especially the churches, to promote the kingdom of heaven on earth by drastically re-thinking the use we make of prisons.

He points out that law is not always a protection of people’s freedom;  it can too often be class- and property-based.  He looks next at the concept of shalom, a peaceful, prosperous society, as presented in the Old and New Testaments.  If that is ‘society’ then it is true that we have no such thing – not because we are only individuals, as Mrs Thatcher maintained, but because of the huge gap between rich and poor in this country and between countries. He might also have considered the similar concept of ubuntu described by Desmond Tutu in No future without forgiveness:  a vision of each person’s humanity bound up with other people’s through generosity, sharing and compassion. 

But usually the poor are over-penalized and over-imprisoned, because they commit mostly ‘street crime’.  Powerful people get away with ‘white collar’ crime (which he rather annoyingly calls ‘suite crime’ for the sake of alliteration), or prevent it from being classified as crime at all.  Company fraud, deaths and injuries through inadequate safety procedures, dumping unsafe drugs on Third World countries, and many similar actual or should-be crimes, dwarf the sums involved and the injuries caused by benefit fraud and other crimes of the poor.  Gorringe makes a good case for saying that the very structure of capitalism, based on a competitive ethic, is criminogenic.  Finally there is state crime, which can range from the International Monetary Fund’s promotion of wealthy nations’ interests to war crimes not prosecuted by the winning side – not to mention wars that were illegal in the first place.

Refreshingly, Gorringe is a Christian writer who does not seek justifications for punishment but questions whether they exist.  How can we honour God by dehumanizing people, especially the weakest?  As for prisons, they owe less to crime control than to political opportunism;  quite apart from their inhumanity, how can it make sense to remove people from the community if we want to reintegrate them, and when will we realize that ‘just as violence breeds violence, so humiliation breeds contempt’ (p. 98).  The Sermon on the Mount has implications for punishment, because punishment does violence to people, but it is the non-violent who will inherit the earth. 

What instead?  Rather than Aquinas’s perception of ‘the depraved’ who have to be restrained ‘by force and fear’, Gorringe describes how restorative justice is based on bringing out the best in people, earning their respect by showing them respect;  it will not work in all cases, of course, but can open the door to repentance and forgiveness.  Gorringe is a professor of theology, but he bases his arguments at least as much on social research.  He does occasionally use theological jargon, however;  I could work out ‘salvific’, but ‘prevenient’ foxed me.  Apart from those lapses, and a not very comprehensive index, this is an excellent, well researched short introduction to a complex subject, readable by both members and non-members of churches.  Let us hope that both will take up the challenge:  we should not put up with governments that scapegoat and punish the poor in the name of criminal ‘justice’, but should work for social justice to restore (or create) shalom in the community. 



Martin Wright
Author of Restoring respect for justice.
October 2005