Abstract
Catholic thinking on prisons and punishment is in a state of flux. For most of its history, the church promoted a theology of order and obedience. Yet, a humanitarian revolution appears underway as the church now opposes punishments it once prescribed, namely torture, slavery, and the death penalty. Crafted largely in response to the prison system in the United States, recent alternatives to the moral-order approach appeal to human dignity, restorative justice, conversion, and social justice. Even so, the trajectory of Catholic moral imagination on punishment bears a particular compatibility with prison abolition.
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