CONTACT US JOIN MAILING LIST

The Catholic Criminal Justice Reform Network

The Catholic Criminal Justice Reform Network (CCJRN) is an initiative of the Lumen Christi Institute that connects legal scholars, attorneys, judges, clergy, law enforcement, people who have been impacted personally by incarceration, and others who are committed to seeing reform in the American criminal justice system. CCJRN aims to give people who have been impacted by the criminal justice system--returning citizens, victims/survivors of crime, and family members--a place to speak about their expeiences and to be listeneed to by those with power in court rooms and classrooms.

CCJRN is motivated by principles of Catholic social thought. We host regular events and gatherings of its members for the purpose of collaboration, dialogue, and seeking solutions that transcend the partisan divide and recognize the inviolable dignity of the human person.

Read a recent article about the CCJRN in the Chicago Catholic.

Read about CCJRN's 2022 Innaugural Conference and a profile of CCJRN's President, Judge Thomas More Donnelly, in the Beacon.

 

 

The Criminal Justice Crisis in America

 

Need

  • Whereas scholars lack access to judges, lawmakers and other practitioners with the power to effect change, system-involved persons frequently do not have access to practitioners or scholars, and their lived experiences do not inform theory or practice. Such barriers to encounter deepen social injustice and impede personal and systemic transformation.

  • Despite the large number of Catholic participants in the criminal justice system, there is not yet a forum for Catholics to gather for discussion, debate, and collaborate on criminal justice reform from a distinctively Catholic perspective – specifically, a perspective informed by Catholic social teaching and its emphasis on the inviolable dignity of the human person.

  • Discussion and debate on these issues in the wider culture often focus on technocratic solutions or partisan ideology—which all too often result in increased fragmentation and ineffectiveness—whereas dialogical engagement with fundamental religious and moral commitments has the potential to generate broad-based coalitions ordered to the common good.

Goals

  • The transformation of our punitive and harsh criminal justice system through dialogue and change of perspective.

  • Act as an incubator where distinctively Catholic thought about criminal justice is developed and from which it will spread into the wider culture.

  • Encourage improvements in curricular treatments of criminal justice in American law schools, including Catholic-affiliated schools, as a means of fostering criminal justice reform.

  • Energize and inform the American Roman Catholic Church’s engagement with criminal justice reform from national to local levels.

 

 

 

For more information or to get involved, please email us ccjrn@lumenchristi.org