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This impulse can be hard to quantify, mainly because thinking about it makes us uncomfortable. But it's pictured well in a disturbing practice currently employed by the Nigerian judicial system in western Africa.

The country of Niger has an established police and criminal justice system—one of the remnants of its days as a French colony. There are Nigerian police officers and judges, as well ...

In a Seinfeld episode entitled "The Engagement," Jerry and his friend, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), have decided it's time to "grow up" and treat the women they date with a little more respect (George has just broken up with a woman because she beat him in chess). The conversation leaves such an indelible mark on George that he immediately looks up an old girlfriend, goes to her apartment, and ...

According to a 2009 study by the Pew Center, the proportion of U.S. adults in the corrections system is 1 in 31. A similar study in 1982 found that the proportion of U.S. adults in the corrections system was 1 in 77.

In her book Radical Gratitude, Ellen Vaughn tells the story of a family friend named Jerry:

Some years ago Jerry was in Russia on a short visit with Prison Fellowship International. He and a group of friends visited a number of prisons, and finished their work a few days early. They asked their hosts if they could go visit children in the hospital.

They were taken to a 750-bed hospital in Moscow at ...

The film Amazing Grace chronicles William Wilberforce's (Ioan Gruffedd) efforts to end the British Transatlantic slave trade during his tenure in Parliament in the 19th century.

This scene depicts a dinner party held in Wilberforce's home, at which a group has gathered in an attempt to convince William to take up the challenge of political activism against the slave trade.

Wilberforce asks, "Mr. Equiano ...

At 15, Raymond Germany didn't heed his mother [Debra's] pleas to leave the "thug life." He became a successful drug dealer, sometimes making $1,000 a day. Then, in July 2001, his career in crime ended abruptly. Shot in the back of his head, he died alone on an empty staircase in a housing project. He was 23.

At first Debra could only cry. Then she became a mother on a Christian mission.

In March 2002, ...

Boston's Charles Street jail used to be home to the city's most notorious characters. Among its former inmates was Frank Abagnale, Jr., the con artist portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the feature film "Catch Me If You Can" (Steven Spielberg, 2002). Once the paragon of prison architecture, the facility fell into disrepair by the 1960s, when it became overcrowded, riotous, and filthy with pigeon droppings. ...

2007 was a bumper year for the Southeast Correctional Center "restorative justice garden" in Charleston, Missouri. Inmates yielded extraordinary crops of a variety of produce on the facility's six-acre vegetable garden, and all of it will be donated to public nonprofit organizations.

Inmates are eager to participate in the program, as the 200-person waiting list suggests. In the words of one inmate, ...

Thousands of Chinese Christians were killed during the Boxer Rebellion—a nationwide effort to snuff out any foreign influences in China that were political, cultural, economic, or religious. Though the rebellion was relatively short, the intense persecution it started persisted for years—most notably under the later Communist leadership of Mao Zedong.

A Christian evangelist who called himself ...

Yvonne Pointer was one of ten children born to "a wonderful mother and father," although she admits: "I was the worst one of the kids. I was the girl who was always suspended, I wanted to try drugs, I dropped out of school, I was pregnant at 16. I did everything my parents did not want me to do."

For three years, a friend of her father's continually tried to reach her. "He was part of the church, and ...