You can love someone and lock them up. I don't let my cats out of the house.

Whenever I snatch a kitty bolting for the door, I hold them aloft and gloat, "No cat has ever escaped this house alive! Mu-wa-ha-ha-ha!"

True story.

No, of course not. It's an incredibly dense problem and while Sister Prejean addresses parts of it, she does not come close to suggesting a comprehensive solution (that's not meant as a criticism; I don't believe she presents herself as offering a solution greater than the need to approach criminal justice with compassion). She is concerned with a particular part of the problem; the unilateral abolition of the death penalty. When that happens, the new problems will be legion.

I found myself very frustrated when in the public defender sphere by how dismissive PDs were of religious motivation in working with prisoners or in working toward justice reform. The idea that you love prisoners first is very very very radical. For one thing, it lays to rest immediately the debate over whether prison is retributive or rehabilitative. For another, it opens the question of how do you rehabilitate someone who is now a life-time member of the prison society and not a person expecting to reintegrate.

I think your feeling of disquiet and your conclusion that I have no remedy for dealing with evil in the world other than behaving as well as I can in my own little sphere. is appropriate. I also consider that sort of inspired. People think the answer to problems is legislation and government and businesses. I disagree. I think the answer is personally assisting the person standing next to you. But then my mother is an anarchist and my father is Jeffersonian republican.

I wonder if Sister Prejean's compassion and activism is her response to her own disquiet and a similar conclusion. Her sphere was a prison ministry. Yours probably isn't.