U.S. Prisons Violate Biblical Law

The Prison Abolition Movement has it half-right while the Right has it all wrong

Copyright©2025 by Independent History and Research • Revisionist History Website

“Turn neither to right nor to left, keep your foot far from evil.'“ Proverbs 4:27

The Cryptocracy has divided us into two warring camps distinguished by the directions “Right” and “Left,” which those who are ignorant of history imagine to be nearly immutable and eternal distinctions demarcating good and bad, morality and crime, family values and anarchy.

The masses choose sides and get behind one slogan or the other. Precision thinking becomes blurred in the process. Hitler the National Socialist is labeled “Right wing” and Dorothy Day, the Catholic operator of Biblically-based houses for the indigent, is called “Left-wing.”

We have been conditioned to take sides and line up behind one or the other category. As with fans of the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs, there’s no in-between or shades of gray. You’re either for the Bills or the Chiefs.

Depending on the direction with which we identify, we either stiffen in resistance when we encounter something Left-wing, or cringe in disgust when the specter of a Right-wing policy is summoned.

Through this tribal conditioning, independent thinking is blocked, if not rendered altogether impossible, and we are processed into suspending our God-given powers of reason.

In certain areas of study it is transparently false to affix these direction markers. Take for example the Old Testament. There are hardcore partisans both Left and Right who despise and dismiss it. On the Left the Bible’s commands for health and well-being related to sexual ethics and the family values patriarchal “headship” principle, are detested.

In Neo-Nazi circles the prominence of true Israel in Jehovah’s salvation covenant, and the divinely approved extirpation of nations engaged in idolatry and magica sexualis, elicit hatred and disgust. [1]

What is missed by both sides of the Left/Right racket are enormously beneficial, life-enhancing laws unique to the Bible which can neither rationally be ascribed to Right or Left, and which are largely ignored by latter-day Liberals and candy-coated Conservatives.

In defiance of Biblical commands in the Old and New Testament, as Richard Seymour has noted, our post-modern society “is increasingly organized around the model of speculation and debt.” Jehovah never intended for His people to be debt slaves singing the plaintive dirge, “I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go.” He never intended for His people to be ruled by a Financial Power ultimately derived from the renting of money (so-called “interest”). In defiance of Him we do it anyway and then whine that we’re suffering under the lash of the Federal Reserve Bank and the hedge fund honchos. The Bible has the solution, yet in our imbecility we repeatedly attempt to implement man-made schemes for relief which fail time after time.

Interest on debt is a weapon of war. It was forbidden to Israel in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 23: 19-20. In the New Testament Jesus forbade it for use against anyone (Luke 6: 34-36). I explicated these matters in my study, “Banksters and Gangsters in Capitalist America.”

Some of the most “conservative Christians” in the U.S. are followers of Ludwig von Mises and his “Austrian School” of economics. Von Mises mocked and derided Jesus as a madman for his teaching contra the renting of money and the perils to our eternal salvation of the heedless accumulation of wealth.

Prisons are Unscriptural

Some of the most “conservative Christians” in America support the maintenance of the worst excuses for penitentiaries in Southern “buckle of the Bible-belt” states.

It’s almost as though the filth and disease, the slop that’s called prison food, and the rape of men by fellow inmates, are regarded as rightfully ancillary to the punishment imposed by a judge, lest the prisoners be molly-coddled. Often the worst violations are in prisons in states with high level of conservative Christian churches and congregants. It’s as if these “Constitutionalists” had never heard of the Eight Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Have any of these Christians read the Old Testament? Our forefathers did. The 1648 Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts has almost no provision for imprisonment as punishment for wrong doing. The common form of punishment in the American colonies was a fine, which was given to victims as compensation for their losses or injuries. In the case of theft, criminals who were unable to pay the fine were contracted as indentured servants to earn the money to pay the victim “treble” the value of what was stolen.

Extensive terms of imprisonment which required supporting murderers and rapists at taxpayer’s expense for months or years, were uncommon in colonial America since most were executed. Other criminals and suspected criminals were imprisoned or jailed almost always while awaiting trial or execution. Prisons in British America generally had no other purpose.

The Quakers, beginning in 1682 with their Scripturally antinomian “Great Law of Pennsylvania,” required that the majority of serious crimes should be “atoned” through imprisonment in a “house of corrections.” In the late eighteenth century “reformers” such as Benjamin Rush, taking no notice of the Mosaic law, advocated the incarceration of criminals in prisons.

The prison abolition movement in the United States is as unbalanced as the “lock ‘em up and throwaway the key” demands of the “law ‘n’ order” crowd. Conservatives mandate penal laws which God never enacted, while liberal incarceration abolitionists apply psychological nostrums and sociological perspectives about a “broken society” which release law-breakers from responsibility for their crimes.

Framing Ted Stevens

When authoritarians depart from the Bible in formulating punishment for crime, they inevitably enable cruel treatment and injustice. For example, the federal government, and the United States Department of Justice specifically, are guilty of numerous miscarriages of justice for political and pecuniary motivations, including the framing Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican.

Slow Death by Life Imprisonment: The Case of Ross Ulbricht

Ross Ulbricht during a visit with his mother Lyn in Federal prison

This full prosecutorial power of the government is also employed against independents. In a high profile case that came to national attention this week, Bitcoin entrepreneur Ross Ulbricht, a man of no political affiliation, in 2011 created a “darkwebsite” called Silk Road, which, as Reason magazine reports, “…used Tor-enabled anonymity and cryptocurrency to allow people to buy and sell often illegal items in safety and security, with the site providing an escrow service between buyer and seller to ensure both were satisfied.”

The charges against Ulbricht were: "narcotics trafficking; distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet; narcotics trafficking conspiracy; continuing criminal enterprise; conspiracy to aid and abet computer hacking; conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identity documents; and money laundering conspiracy.’

“None of the charges were related to either personally selling an illegal substance to anyone—Ulbricht merely ran a website that facilitated it—and none were related to causing direct harm to anyone's life or property. Given the amazing water-muddying the prosecution achieved by talking about, but never trying Ulbricht for or proving in court beyond a reasonable doubt, allegedly planned, but never executed, murders for hire…”

Ulbricht, 31-years of age, was sentenced to die in prison by an Obama appointee, Judge Katherine B. Forrest of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Forrest is now a partner in the New York law firm of Paul Weiss).

Her verdict was facilitated by the U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, an Obama appointee who is now a partner in the New York law firm of WilmerHale. The specific terms of the vindictive imprisonment imposed on Ulbricht by Forrest as approved by Bharara was “double life imprisonment plus 40 years, without the possibility of parole.”

On appeal the sentence was upheld by means of an egregious lie: “…in light of all of the circumstances of a particular offense as well as other relevant conduct, which, in this case, includes five attempted murders for hire…”

No murders for hire were ever proved in a court of law, yet the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole was upheld by the appeals court on that non-existent basis. The federal government was going to slowly extinguish the life of the defendant with what intelligence agencies term, “extreme prejudice.”

After ten years’ imprisonment, on January 21 Mr. Ulbricht was granted a full pardon by President Trump, on the president’s second day in office.

Reinstate the Biblical Penalty for Perjury

A life sentence without parole is also a death sentence. This writer is opposed to all capital punishment until such time as the Biblical penalty for perjury is reinstated: the perjurer receives the same penalty he sought to have imposed on the innocent defendant.

For capital punishment to be inflicted there must also be, according to the Bible, the testimony of two witnesses to a murder (DNA evidence can be used in those cases where two scientists who link a killer’s DNA to a particular defendant are subject to the Biblical penalty for perjury).

Jehovah’s law on perjury is pure genius! Think of how many innocent people who have been executed, or left to rot in prison for decades, would be alive or free at this moment if this divine command had been in effect. The Bible’s law on perjury must become the law of the land.

The Mosaic Criminal Justice System of Equal Recompense

The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts (1648)

A man steals a widow’s life savings and he is sentenced to ten years. In some prisons he loafs for that period. In others he labors for the state when he should be put to work in the prison, or indentured to an outside employer — to pay the widow back (under the Bible if he flees the indenture he can incur the death penalty).

From the Quakers to busy-body Benjamin Rush, to our psychology and psychiatry-riddled contemporary culture, the goal of incarceration exhibits every conceivable objective except what Jehovah commands. Our prisons purport to seek rehabilitation and reform (“corrections”).

Moreover, punitive suffering of inmates is the mission which many “goldly” people believe is justified. Deliberately inhumane conditions exist in perpetuity in all too many American jails and prisons to be the result of chance. I reckon they are due to consistent covert support for neglect on the part of “Conservatives.” The mistreatment of helpless captives is a blot on the states where it occurs. It badly undercuts the Christian claim of those who wear their faith like a badge while permitting these miserable conditions to obtain.

In a Biblical nation, if I steal your car prison has nothing to do with it. I pay you back three times the value of what I have purloined. If I don’t have the money, the government enters me in a labor program where with the wages I earn you are compensated triple for your loss. My failure to submit opens me to the possibility of capital punishment for my refusal.

Steven Anderson: “Is Imprisonment for Crime Biblical?”

In what follows, Mr. Anderson presents the brilliant, fair and humane contours of God’s law in this realm, which is far in advance of anything man has thus far concocted, putting paid to the libel that Jehovah is a troglodyte deity sunk in antediluvian superstition.

In actuality, that scornful invective is more aptly applied to the architects and administrators of the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, and other hell holes like it. Robert Hood, a former warden at Florence is on record stating that the prison was ‘not designed for humanity…It's…a far more stark environment than any other prison I've ever seen, and I've been to all of the federal prisons. I call it a clean version of hell."

Steven Anderson:

“The Law of Moses sets out what is, without a doubt, the ideal system of criminal justice. It must be the ideal, since the Law was devised directly and entirely by God Himself, as Israel’s King. It is striking, then, that there is no jail in the Law of Moses. Punishment is by physical and financial damages or death. Outside of the Mosaic code, jail is mentioned occasionally in the Old Testament (Gen 39:19–40:23; Jer 37:11-21), which shows that it existed at the time…

“In Numbers 15:34, a man was held in custody pending a verdict, but it was assumed that the verdict would not be that he should remain in jail. So jail did exist at the time of Moses, but only as a place to temporarily hold the accused pending an investigation and trial.

“Under the Mosaic Law, a thief had to make restitution for the thing which he stole, adding 20 percent to its value (Lev 6:4-5). If a man dug a pit and failed to cover it, and another man’s ox fell into the pit and died, the man who dug the pit was given the dead ox, but had to pay the price of the ox to the ox’s owner (Exod 21:33-34). The overall principle of justice in the Mosaic Law was equal recompense...(Exod 21:23-25). The punishment was to be exactly equal to the crime committed—no more, and no less.

“A murderer was to be put to death (Num 35:17)....A false witness was to be given the sentence that would have been given to the man whom he falsely accused (Deut 19:16-19).

“In certain cases the judges could prescribe a limited number of lashes as punishment for unspecified crimes (Deut 25:1-3). Various other punishments are prescribed in the Mosaic Law for specific offenses, but always with the aim of equal recompense…This is a great contrast to the modern American legal system, in which often light sentences are given for serious crimes, while some minor offenses result in a long jail sentence and a heavy fine. Little or no concern is given to how the sentence might negatively impact the guilty person, his family, or all of society.

“The perfectly equal nature of the criminal justice system set out in the biblical Torah led Moses to boast, “What great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law, which I set before you today?’ (Deut 4:8).

“The ultimate deterrent to crime is capital punishment (cf. Deut 13:5, 11; 17:7, 12-13; 19:19-20; 21:21; 22:21-24; 24:7).” [End quote fromTruthOnlyBible.com]

For rape, murder and kidnapping the only restitution is execution. Felony non-violent crime, and misdemeanor violent crime, are recompensed by placing the criminal in bondage: a third of the wrong-doer’s wages going to the state in return for supervising him and his work arrangement, a third forwarded to his own family to keep them from penury, and a third paid to the victim. After the victim has been fully compensated treble, the wrong-doer’s bondage comes to an end. In a Biblical institution such as this, recidivism would be comparatively low.

Jehovah knows what He is doing. He knows how lazy we are. He understands how many crimes are committed from sloth. Forcing criminals to work for their victims is heaven’s crime-fighting strategy.

The prison-industrial complex ought to be mostly closed. It is a school for crime, sodomy, sloth and torment.

The crime, decay, waste and death around us are symptoms of the failure to submit to the Word of God, as it is written.

Either we believe the Bible or we don’t. Away with the wicked, hypocritical nullification of His Word on the Right, and the open, arrogant denial of His Word on the Left. Right and Left are both in rebellion.

Nearly two hundred years ago Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “There is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.”

America was intended to be the New Israel, the city on a hill, the light of Jesus unto the nations. We are betraying our mission and selling our inheritance, as did Esau of old. It is time we rekindled our destiny.

NOTE

[1] The Jehovah’s Witnesses do not have a monopoly on the use of this precious name, the long-standing English translation of YHWH, which is God’s personal name in the Old Testament—often written as Yahweh—where it appears more than 7,000 times. If it is not wrong to translate Yehoshua into English as Jesus, then by the same token it is not wrong to render Yahweh into English as Jehovah. This is the translation our forefathers in the English-speaking world favored for centuries.

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Revisionist historian Michael Hoffman is the author of They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America. He explores the ascendance of the Neoplatonic-Hermetic-Kabbalistic mind virus in his book The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome. He explicates the alchemical processing of humanity in Twilight Language. He is the author of eight other volumes of history and literature including Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, as well as Usury in Christendom, Judaism Discovered, and Adolf Hitler: Enemy of the German People. Michael has written extensive introductions to Alexander McCaul’sThe Talmud Tested, Johann Andreas Eisenmenger’s Traditions of the Jews, and The 1582 Rheims New Testament.

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