Prisons – Quakerism’s latest challenge - preview
Bob Johnson says it is time to take our testimonies into our prisons
Slavery challenged Quakerism in multiple ways; today, prisons do the same If you take a long calm look at it, avoiding the knee-jerk populist approach, then the overlap between prisons and slavery is painfully close Two hundred years ago the economic case against abolishing slavery appeared overwhelming – yet principle and human values prevailed Today, the link between prisons and economics is subtler, but just as offensive Perhaps the most striking statistic about prisoners is that their number goes up as the wealth gap widens The bigger the difference between rich and poor in a given nation, the more prisons that nation builds and the greater the number of its citizens it incarcerates So it’s not crime rates that build prisons, it’s inequality – which of course was the fundamental principle behind the slave trade, then as now
Bob Johnson
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News round-up
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‘Heeding God’s call’ – the peace churches link up
Lizz Roe
Prisons – Quakerism’s latest challenge
Bob Johnson
Comment
Jess Pasteiner & Sarah Freeman
Letters
editorial@thefriend.org
In the steps of …
Warren Bardsley
Responding to Conflict in the Middle East
Michael Eccles
Time for a new Bill of Rights?
Noël Staples
Quakers and other faiths
Tony Stoller
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