current assumptions. When we start to dig down a bit and engage in self-re- flection, many of us (even in the church) realize that our tendency is to op- erate with a broadly shared set of interlocking beliefs, attitudes, and working assumptions about (a) what justice is, (b) who returning citizens are, and, consequently, (c) how we should respond to and engage with them. Let’s un- pack five core elements of this dominant paradigm, or mental framework, that we often find ourselves unconsciously working from. Justice and just desserts. Much of the time, we think of justice as being fun- damentally about crime and punishment, about determining guilt and met- ing out “just desserts.” In this framework, the ideal of justice is proportional punishment, and the principle is the lex talionis (an eye for an eye). This isn’t intended to be mean-spirited or vengeful. It’s about being clear-eyed and fair, about each person getting what they deserve—no more but also no less. And so, being a “criminal” means that removal from society is often, sadly, the just and right thing. Justice and karmic payback. The goal of just desserts is that, through the process of retribution and punishment, the scales of justice will (at least sym- bolically) be righted again: You do the crime, you do the (proportional) time. There’s a kind of karma involved. The idea of karma is everywhere these days, both inside and outside the church. Karma literally means “action.” It’s about actions, deeds, works, and the results of those actions, the consequences of what we do, the law of cause and effect. Karma says that actions always have reactions, that things don’t happen for no reason, and that you get what you give. Karma says that good actions get rewarded, and evil ones get punished— measure for measure—until the scales of justice are brought back into balance. Returning citizens and need and risk. Once again, picture ten returning cit- izens showing up at the front door of your church this coming Sunday. Think of your initial instinctive reaction. Chances are that prospect immediately conjures up an image of great need and potential risk. After all, we’ve been trained to think of returning citizens as a walking basket of physical, social, mental, and emotional needs. If labeling them “defective” sounds too harsh, we settle for thinking of them as “broken” and in need of fixing. A dominant note of neediness seems self-evident. But neediness is only half of it. What makes this particular group of ten needy people different from other groups is that we tend to instinctively add a “risk” factor. The thought is triggered that these people aren’t just different, they’re potentially dangerously different. We think, “These people bring risk. They’ve done something so bad, so wrong, that they had to be removed from society. Not only that, who knows what damage prison has done to them to make them even more risky to be around? They may be manipulative and predatory and either
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