Abstract:

In today’s background of constructing modern civilized prisons, it is necessary to introduce a variety of effective educating and reforming methods. Religious education needs to be used in educating and reforming criminals because of its rich reformation resources and unique perspective of reformation. To make up for the inadequacy in both pracitce and theoretical research about the positive factors of religion in educating and reforming prisoners, we should explore the tradition of religious education in prisons in modern Chinese history by comparing historical evolution of Chinese and Western religious education. And on the basis of studies on the history and status quo of religious education in western prisons, we should finally bring the religious education into China’s prison management system.

Key words: prison, execution of punishment, religious education, reformatory education, reformation of criminals