Pope Calls for Rehabilitation of Prisoners, Rejects Torture

From his address to participants at a world congress on pastoral care in prisons:

Judicial and penal institutions play a fundamental role in protecting citizens and safeguarding the common good (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2266). At the same time, they are to aid in rebuilding “social relationships disrupted by the criminal act committed” (cf. “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church,” 403). By their very nature, therefore, these institutions must contribute to the rehabilitation of offenders, facilitating their transition from despair to hope and from unreliability to dependability. When conditions within jails and prisons are not conducive to the process of regaining a sense of a worth and accepting its related duties, these institutions fail to achieve one of their essential ends. Public authorities must be ever vigilant in this task, eschewing any means of punishment or correction that either undermine or debase the human dignity of prisoners. In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture “cannot be contravened under any circumstances” (Ibid., 404).

Here, the pope lays out two key functions of the penal system: defense against the criminal and rehabilitation. As I argued in the context of the death penalty, the Church is rightly moving away from arguments based on the concept of retributive justice, given that it so easily slides into vengeance. But rehabilitation is still a vital purpose of the penal system, and should act as a check on instincts to exact vengeance.

Also, what he says at the end is crucially important. There are no circumstances when torture can he justified; in other words, it is an intrinsically evil act (see my very first post on Vox Nova). Attempting to argue that torture can sometimes be justified in specific circumstances (typically “ticking bomb scenarios”), as is done to varying degrees by people like Jimmy Akin and Fr. Brian Harrison, is as unacceptable as using particular circumstances to defend abortion.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan).