More God, Less Crime

More God, Less Crime
Author: Byron Johnson
Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2011-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1599473836

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In More God, Less Crime renowned criminologist Byron R. Johnson proves that religion can be a powerful antidote to crime. The book describes how faith communities, congregations, and faith-based organizations are essential in forming partnerships necessary to provide the human and spiritual capital to effectively address crime, offender rehabilitation, and the substantial aftercare problems facing former prisoners. There is scattered research literature on religion and crime but until now, there has never been one publication that systematically and rigorously analyzes what we know from this largely overlooked body of research in a lay-friendly format. The data shows that when compared to current strategies, faith-based approaches to crime prevention bring added value in targeting those factors known to cause crime: poverty, lack of education, and unemployment. In an age of limited fiscal resources, Americans can’t afford a criminal justice system that turns its nose up at volunteer efforts that could not only work better than the abysmal status quo, but also save billions of dollars at the same time. This book provides readers with practical insights and recommendations for a faith-based response that could do just that.

When Texas Prison Scams Religion

When Texas Prison Scams Religion
Author: Michael G. Maness
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 683
Release: 2023-05-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1728377552

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When Texas Prison Scams Religion exposes corruption in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, especially in the abuse of religion. In many ways, this book is a literature review of 1,800-plus works that defends freedom of conscience in prison while exposing the unconstitutionality of the seminary program that “buys faith with favor” from prisoners. The state veritably ordains the prisoner a “Field Minister” that represents the offices of the Governor, TDCJ Director, and wardens throughout the prison. Therein, TDCJ lies about neutrality in a program all about Christian missions and lies again in falsely certifying elementary Bible students as counselors. Why is the director sponsoring psychopaths counseling psychopaths? In fact, TDCJ pays $314 million a year to UTMB for psychiatric care and receives not a single report of the care given, and worse, for UTMB generates no reports itself. The underbelly TDCJ’s executive culture of cover up is exposed. TDCJ has hired the lowest qualified of the applicant pool many times in the last 25 years and regularly destroys statistics on violence. TDCJ Dir. Collier led the prison to model Louisiana Warden Burl Cain, the most scandal-ridden in penal history according to a host of published news stories for 20 years. Therein, Collier led TDCJ to favor the smallest segment of religious society within Evangelical Dominionism. Texas has no business endorsing the truth of any religion over another. We close with a proposal that utilizes the 400,000,000 hours of officer contact over ten years as a definitive influence in contrast to a commissioner that spends less than 10 minutes on each decision. Maness has been lobbying Austin for 15 years to definitively access staff for his “100,000 Mothers’ 1% Certainty Parole Texas Constitutional Amendment,” which would revolutionize prison culture and save Texans millions of the dollars.

The Bloody Code in England and Wales, 1760–1830

The Bloody Code in England and Wales, 1760–1830
Author: John Walliss
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2018-03-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 3319745611

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This book is a comparative quantitative analysis of the administration of justice across four English and three Welsh counties between 1760 and 1830. Drawing on a dataset of over 22,000 indictments, the book explores the similarities and differences between how the so-called Bloody Code was administered between, on the one hand, England and Wales, and, on the other, individual English and Welsh counties. The book is structured in two sections that trace the criminal justice process in England and Wales respectively. The first chapter in each section examines the pattern of indictments in the respective counties, and explores the crimes for which men and women were indicted, the verdicts handed down, and the sentences passed. The second chapter then explores patterns of sentences of death, executions and pardons for those capitally convicted of serious crimes against the person and forms of property offences.

God vs. the Gavel

God vs. the Gavel
Author: Marci A. Hamilton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2005-05-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1139445030

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God vs. the Gavel challenges the pervasive assumption that all religious conduct deserves constitutional protection. While religious conduct provides many benefits to society, it is not always benign. The thesis of the book is that anyone who harms another person should be governed by the laws that govern everyone else - and truth be told, religion is capable of great harm. This may not sound like a radical proposition, but it has been under assault since the 1960s. The majority of academics and many religious organizations would construct a fortress around religious conduct that would make it extremely difficult to prosecute child abuse by clergy, medical neglect of children by faith-healers, and other socially unacceptable behaviors. This book intends to change the course of the public debate over religion by bringing to the public's attention the tactics of religious entities to avoid the law and therefore harm others.

May God Have Mercy

May God Have Mercy
Author: John C. Tucker
Publisher: Delta
Total Pages: 369
Release: 1998-08-10
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0385332947

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In some states by law, in others by tradition, judges imposing a sentence of death complete the grim ritual with the words "May God have mercy on your soul." In 1982, in Grundy, Virginia, a young miner named Roger Coleman was sentenced to death for the murder of his sister-in-law. Ten years later, the sentence was carried out, despite the extraordinary efforts of Kitty Behan, a brilliant and dedicated young lawyer who devoted two years of her life to gathering evidence of Coleman's innocence, evidence so compelling that media around the world came to question the verdict. The courts, ruling on technicalities, refused to hear the new evidence and witnesses. Finally, the governor of Virginia ordered a lie-detector test to be administered on the morning of Coleman's scheduled execution, and in a chair that to Coleman surely looked like nothing so much as an electric chair. In John Tucker's telling, this story is an emotional and unforgettable roller-coaster ride from the awful night of the crime to the equally awful night of the execution. Perhaps it was not Roger Coleman whose soul was in need of God's mercy, but the judges, prosecutors, and politicians who procured his death.

The Angola Prison Seminary

The Angola Prison Seminary
Author: Michael Hallett
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2016-08-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317300602

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Corrections officials faced with rising populations and shrinking budgets have increasingly welcomed "faith-based" providers offering services at no cost to help meet the needs of inmates. Drawing from three years of on-site research, this book utilizes survey analysis along with life-history interviews of inmates and staff to explore the history, purpose, and functioning of the Inmate Minister program at Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka "Angola"), America’s largest maximum-security prison. This book takes seriously attributions from inmates that faith is helpful for "surviving prison" and explores the implications of religious programming for an American corrections system in crisis, featuring high recidivism, dehumanizing violence, and often draconian punishments. A first-of-its-kind prototype in a quickly expanding policy arena, Angola’s unique Inmate Minister program deploys trained graduates of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in bi-vocational pastoral service roles throughout the prison. Inmates lead their own congregations and serve in lay-ministry capacities in hospice, cell block visitation, delivery of familial death notifications to fellow inmates, "sidewalk counseling" and tier ministry, officiating inmate funerals, and delivering "care packages" to indigent prisoners. Life-history interviews uncover deep-level change in self-identity corresponding with a growing body of research on identity change and religiously motivated desistance. The concluding chapter addresses concerns regarding the First Amendment, the dysfunctional state of U.S. corrections, and directions for future research.

Religion and Crime: Theory, Research, and Practice

Religion and Crime: Theory, Research, and Practice
Author: Kent R. Kerley
Publisher: MDPI
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018-11-15
Genre: Crime
ISBN: 3038973300

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This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Religion and Crime: Theory, Research, and Practice" that was published in Religions

Love in a Cauldron of Misery

Love in a Cauldron of Misery
Author: Kirk Blackard
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2012-09-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1620322722

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Christians are called to minister to people in prison. But most know next to nothing about prisons, the needs of the people in them, or the biblical basis for addressing those needs. Love in a Cauldron of Misery fills that void. This book provides a brief historical perspective that orients the reader and a discussion, mainly in the words of people with real experience, of what prisons and prisoners are really like and why the need for ministry is so great. It then explores the biblical charge for Christians to meet these needs and discusses ways in which they can do so. Love in a Cauldron of Misery is an invaluable resource for any pastor, teacher, or lay-person who is participating in, considering, or just wants to know more about prison ministry.

Practicality of Grace in Protestant Theology

Practicality of Grace in Protestant Theology
Author: Michael G. Maness
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2021-05-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1725284189

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These 15 articles were chosen by Testamentum Imperium Founder Kevaughn Mattis with Michael G. Maness from among 163 articles published in the 2011 online journal. Each author was chosen for their expertise and decades of experience in the practice of pastoral care in their unique fields. How the practicality of grace applies in suicide, sex addiction, sexual assault, shame, hospital or prison chaplaincy, even in eschatology and forgiveness is covered by these veterans in the field. The articles touch a broad scope of affliction from physical to moral dilemmas. And part of the choice was not to find from the 163 those who see eye-to-eye. We desired to share the unique expertise. Each author is a weathered captain who has ferried souls across tumultuous waves of grief, confusion, self-control, and internal torment to a port of healing and peaceful victory. With contributions from: Peter Lillback Glenn R. Kreider Terry Ann Smith Timothy J. Demy Patricia Cuyatti Chavez Leon Harris Christopher D. Surber Keith A. Evans Alan M. Martin LaVerne Bell-Tolliver John DelHousaye Enrique Ramos Sabrina N. Gilchrist D. J. Louw

How We Saved Texas Prison Chaplaincy 2011

How We Saved Texas Prison Chaplaincy 2011
Author: Michael G. Maness
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2015-10-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1504952758

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As Maness so forcefully presents, religion is truly the greatest source for change in human history, and our staff chaplains facilitate that. Likewise, we came to see there would be little true cost savings, in that some staffer would have to take care religion in prisonits a right after alland manage the good volunteers. Jerry Madden, Senior Fellow Right on Crime RightonCrime.org House Committee on Corrections Chairman 2011-12 It seemed like all was lost. . . . Dr. Keith Bellamy Senior Minister, Woodville Church of Christ TDCJ Certified Volunteer Chaplain 15-plus years Take a ride through Maness book and learn firsthand about reducing crime, rehabilitating lives, making our streets safer, and bringing hope to the least, the last and the lost just like Jesus commanded. The chaplain of the prison brings hope and light in what can be a dark and stressful place, all the more reason we need them. Carol S. Vance Former Chairman, Texas Board of Criminal Justice Harris County District Attorney 1966-79 Every TDCJ chaplain and every chaplaincy manager owe the existence of their jobs to the efforts of a few unique individuals who rallied many to seek help from Texas senators and representatives. Frank Graham, Founder Chapel of Hope.org Politically, the TDCJ chaplaincy was doomed. God used the courage of one man to turn that situation around. Thank you, Chaplain Michael Maness, for preserving this magnificent piece of important religious history. Dr. Paul W. Carlin, LBT, Ph. D. TheMinistryChurch.org