This book has helped change the way I look at people. Check the discerption. There’s a new book too, but I haven’t read it yet.
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439153159/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_sWQuAb27PKCKH
This was initiated by Gregory Boyle, a priest who started Homeboy Industries. He's a pudgy white dude who has become a loving and safe parent to tens of thousands of gang members. He wrote a phenomenal book called Tattoos on the Heart.
http://www.amazon.com/Tattoos-Heart-Power-Boundless-Compassion/dp/1439153159
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Father Gregory Boyle.
It's not a technical treatise on Christian theology but rather an example of what life is like for someone who actually lives like Christ called us to live.
Last year I read <em>Tattoos on the Heart</em>, by Father Boyle, who runs Homeboy Industries in LA, which employs and rehabilitates former LA gang members. One of the first steps to making a better life for yourself outside of the gang is getting your tattoos removed, because they really hurt employment opportunities.
Former gang members in the book said they hurt easily 100x worse than getting the tattoo in the first place. You've got to burn off the skin, over and over. It sucks.
Also, it takes way more sessions to remove a color tattoo. Black and white isn't as tough, and Homeboy does those in-house.
That’s... a hard question to answer.
Generally speaking, justice is simply people receiving what they deserve. It’s meant to be fair and blind to circumstances (that’s why depictions of “Justitia” or “Lady Justice” are often blindfolded).
There’s a classical view of justice where a punishment is dealt as a result of a crime. For example, a thief may lose there hand or a murderer put to death. This goes back to the Code of Hammurabi and the concept of “an eye for an eye”.
There’s also more modern concepts such as social justice where society works to right past societal wrongs. For example (in the US), working towards fair and safe working conditions for farm workers who are largely Hispanic and often undocumented. Or (again in the US) the civil rights movement and the fight to remove barriers to the Black vote (Poll Taxes, Literacy Tests, etc.). This form of justice interconnects with several others such as environmental justice, distributive justice, and restorative justice (as seen below).
There’s also the concept of Restorative Justice where justice is found through rehabilitation and reconciliation between the perpetrator and their victims and the community. It’s based around the idea that the criminal is often a victim as well, sometimes very literally (molestation victims who themselves become molesters) or more conceptually (poverty and lack of equal access to services such as healthcare and education). This one is pretty interesting so I recommend reading Tattoos on the Heart by Fr. Greg Boyle S.J. This book (and restorative justice in general) is about healing. EDIT: this form of justice requires the perpetrator to feel contrition and regret for their actions (in other words: this wouldn’t work for Charles Manson)
Ideas of justice also change between cultures (or even Within a culture) and time periods. Our own personal sense of justice can differ greatly from one another. This is because our ideas of justice are based on our views of morality and ethics which can change based on lived experience as well as education.
Justice is also generally what the people in power say it is. Some states in the US believe that execution is a just punishment for murder while others (and other nations I might add) do not see it as just.
TLDR: the concept of justice is super complicated and very subjective.