Prisons are seemingly accepted by many I know as the just solution to many crimes. Although sometimes used interchangeably with the word jail, the word prison refers to something somewhat different in my country. In America, jails are used at the local level to hold people awaiting trial or to enact generally short sentences (around a year or less) for misdemeanors, whereas prisons are used to enact longer sentences for those convicted of felonies. Much of this system is utterly foreign to Biblical criminal punishments, although many Christians I've known have yet to realize this or become concerned about this.
In Leviticus 24:12, readers can find an account of a man who blasphemed God, and until they knew what punishment for this offense God would reveal the Israelites put the man in custody, seemingly in something that at least amounted to a makeshift jail. This was a temporary confinement, only to last until the just penalty came to light. The penalty, ultimately, was death (Leviticus 24:16). A similar story can be found in Numbers 15:32-36, with the sin in question being gathering wood on the Sabbath instead of blasphemy. As in the other account, the offender was temporarily kept in custody until it was clear how to proceed.
Never once are jails/prisons prescribed as actual penalties for criminal offenses in Mosaic Law. Instead, a variety of punishments are prescribed and often fastened to particular actions, ranging from financial damages or restitution (Exodus 21:18-19, Exodus 21:1-4) to servitude to pay off a debt (Exodus 22:3) to amputation of body parts (Exodus 21:23-25, Deuteronomy 25:11-12) to execution (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 22:22) to 1-40 lashes (Deuteronomy 25:1-3). The only function of a "prison" in Mosaic Law is to confine men and women who are awaiting a trial or verdict. Offenders are to, depending on their crimes, make restitution to victims, be flogged in a humane way and then released without stigma, lose select body parts, or be removed from terrestrial life and thus be unable to harm anyone else further. These are Biblically just punishments.
Instead of acknowledging the alien nature of prisons to just criminal punishment, many Christians I know speak as if the American justice system is just simply by nature of being established by the government, which is just an appeal to authority combined with non sequiturs and question begging. Then there's also the fact that some people I know would likely get upset over public consensual homosexual affection (which is not problematic) seem content to not challenge the Biblical capital offense of homosexual rape, or other violence, in American prisons. I fucking hate people who hold to such hypocrisy--especially when they claim they represent Christianity and reason. The fact of the matter is that Biblical morality rejects the use of prisons for punitive purposes as unjust.
The Biblically prescribed justice system offers a spectrum of punishments that are tailored to particular crimes, instead of giving many offenders different extents of the same punishment. And at least one of the Bible's legal penalties could be highly rehabilitative: if a thief has no money with which to repay someone he or she stole from, he or she is sentenced to work the debt off, with the maximum amount of time permitted for the servitude being six full years (Exodus 21:2). During this period the poor thief could learn a new occupation, engage in introspective soul-searching, be productive in a way that benefits the community (or at least a part of it), and perhaps even come to befriend the person(s) he or she stole from.
If Christianity is true, then the American prison system is unjust, as were many other criminal punishment systems before it in other nations, for in Christian theology Mosaic Law reflects God's nature and God's nature does not change (Malachi 3:6). The fact that I hear little to no talk about this issue from many Christians reveals an ignorance about basic Christian ethics and moral epistemology. It is my hope that other Christians begin to recognize that they are at best deeply inconsistent in their worldview ethics when they contradict the prescriptions of the Bible.
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