In 2010, the General Assembly voted to reinstate observance of "Criminal Justice Sunday" in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), as well as approving some funding “to support a broad convocation of interested individuals, to be called by PHEWA, to consider and propose the creation of a Presbyterian Health, Education, and Welfare Association (PHEWA) network on criminal justice for education and advocacy ministries…”
The resources available here grow out of the ministry of a Presbyterian lay pastor, and former PHEWA board member, who has worked with incarcerated women in Tulsa, Oklahoma for the past eleven years.
Couple counseling is not a viable therapeutic tool for use in violent family relationships.
This resolution affirms the continued use of restorative justice as the guiding metaphor for the work, program and ministry of the church engaged with the criminal "justice" system. If offers a simple definition of restorative justice as "addressing the hurts and the needs of the victim, the offender, and the community in such a way that all — victim, offender and community — might be healed."
The 200th General Assembly (1988) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) adopted a statement on "Prison Violence and Nonviolent Alternatives" that reaffirmed the theology of previous General Assemblies in urging that "individual Presbyterians and the entities of the General Assembly . . . advocate a social order where compassion and justice characterize efforts toward those in the criminal justice system." The statement went on to call for "changing a prison system that is based on the concept of punishment to one that encourages the restoration of the offender to the community and the development of alternatives to incarceration." The statement expressed …