CORRECTING CORRECTIONS: A JUST RESPONSE TO THE AMERICAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.

This paper attempts to address and formulate a just and ethical response to the Criminal Justice system's War on Drugs by focusing on the ethical issues of sentencing and mass incarceration through studying its effects on Minority communities. The first half of the paper engages the issue of integrity in the Criminal Justice system. By investigating the ethical dimensions behind sentencing and incarceration I will show that the American criminal justice system primarily functions as a mechanism of racialized social control. As criminality becomes connected with race the legislative measures are also tied to racial classification. Therefore the legal system now delimitated by perceived racial identity now functions as racist, unjust, and immoral. The resulting collateral damage on minority neighborhoods from the War on Drugs are communities that are economically, socially, and politically disadvantaged. The second half of the paper attempts to formulate a just response for Minority religious communities and institutions affected by the War on Drugs and the prison-industrial complex through the method of civil resistance pioneered by Martin Luther King, Jr., through King's six steps of nonviolent change in conjunction with his description of just law and an examination of the results of the War on Drugs and the collateral damage to communities. I assert that the communities' continued compliance with the American criminal justice system will not interrupt the dynamics of systemic oppression. Therefore the Church and affected communities are called by God to confront this systemic evil. Using the same Biblical authority of the American Civil Rights movement and King's methodology I propose that the Church should use nonviolent resistance to interrupt the Drug War to restore lives and communities and to stop the injustice of the prison-industrial complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]