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Punitive measures

As an undergraduate student 25 years ago, I found myself behind bars—not as an inmate but as a correctional officer. One of the youngest members of a large metropolitan sheriff’s department on the west coast of Florida, I worked full-time at the maximum-security jail in order to pay for college.

Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11

Michelangelo and Rembrandt depicted him bearded and robed, seated and downcast, absorbed with inexpressible grief. His hand cradles his face, wrinkled from a lonely and thankless vocation. He was threatened, put on trial, imprisoned, publicly humiliated and thrown into a pit. He is Jeremiah, “the weeping prophet,” who announced the Lord’s judgment on Judah and called on Hebrews to repent of their sins and renew their covenant with Yahweh.