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Three of our CLF prisoner members wrote pieces for Quest Monthly on the theme of Justice. What follows are excerpts from these pieces.

by Jim, CLF Prisoner Member

You might think that as one of two million incarcerated men and women in the United States of America I would have strong opinions about “Justice” and some intense emotional feelings about it.

You would be correct. It is only with a very little humor and tongue-in-cheek I and others like me will tell you “there is so little justice in the system it is criminal.” I once believed in and followed the American justice system from an early age. I learned it in school and in society, or so I had thought. It was not until I fell afoul of the law that I became intimately familiar with the workings of the system.

The CLF and its Prison Ministry are making some baby steps to review and improve our “justice” system. We need to do more. Members of congregations should make efforts to go into jails and prisons to mentor and counsel incarcerated men and women. Ministers or other congregation/fellowship leaders should contact prison chaplains to volunteer to lead services and meet the inmates.

Let’s bring our vision of justice close to home.

by Russell, CLF Prisoner Member

Justice is supposed to mean putting right what is wrong. Justice is meant to help those who cannot, and/or should not help themselves.

I do not advocate breaking the law. I have done that and have learned a very valuable lesson from doing so. But justice is fleeting—there one minute, gone the next. Where you may receive it, the next may not.

One man may enter a courtroom and receive five years and the next five months, both for the same crime. Yet if an officer of the law were to be charged, it would likely end in suspension for three months. The poor who can’t afford fast-talking attorneys are left with people who work shoulder-to-shoulder with the prosecution.

But everyone is equal. We all deserve justice the same way.

by Jack, CLF Prisoner Member

Conflict arises when justice becomes just-us, when justice is defined by judging others according to how much they act or look like “us.” We administer justice to demand conformity to a perceived norm of the moment, the time, the decade, the age.

The Old Testament of the Bible set down the command to “do justice, love righteousness, and walk humbly with our God.” The New Testament set down the commandment to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. So many of us are so different. Can we cease judging others as to whether they are “just-us”? Could we all walk humbly with our God, hand in hand, lifting up those who need a helping hand to join us on our walk?