Source: (2001) Update: The Church Council on Justice and Corrections (Winter): 6.
Drawn from a review of literature from previous work by staff and members of the Church Council on Justice and Corrections, this article presents a typology of religiously-based reasons supporting the imposition of punishment. The types identified herein are the following: Puritan/Neo-Puritan (separate the good and bad to uphold the good and punish the bad); repentance (people who commit bad acts need to repent); purification/sacrifice (stress on the healing nature of punishment, and the suffering a guilty person must experience to make up for wrongdoing); restoration of balance in society/people/moral order (punishment restores the balance in the moral order); and symbolic ceremonies/rituals.
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