This collection of essays on policing and the use of force, while written over the course of the last twenty-five years, remains relevant and timely. Although issues in policing and questions about excessive force and brutality have been addressed by criminologists, sociologists, philosophers, and criminal justice ethicists, only a handful of theological ethicists treat this pressing matter. While the Christian moral tradition has a voluminous record of theological attention to violence and nonviolence, war and peace, there is a dearth of references to policing. And most considerations of criminal justice issues by Christians and their churches concentrate on prison reform, or abolition, and the death penalty, but not policing. These essays, authored by a theological ethicist possessing professional experience in law enforcement, seek to fill this curious gap. They offer a framework for moral reasoning concerning the justification for police use of force and the just application of such force, and they propose just policing as a model that is consonant with promoting a just peace in communities and society. In addition, they explore the implications of such an approach for wider, international questions about just war, terrorism, the responsibility to protect, and post-war justice.

Tobias Winright is Associate Professor of Theological Ethics and Associate Professor of Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University. Among his publications, he coauthored After the Smoke Clears: The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice (2010), edited Green Discipleship: Catholic Theological Ethics and the Environment (2011), and coedited Can War Be Just in the 21st Century? Ethicists Engage the Tradition (2015). He was also coeditor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.