Confessions of a Former Prosecutor: Abandoning Vengeance and Embracing True Justice
with Preston Shipp
Saturday, January 18, 2025
9:30 a.m. – 12:00 noon CDT
Online

"The First Duty of Any Society is Justice." These words are engraved on the front of the Criminal Justice Building in downtown Nashville. As people of faith, we are called to "do justice." Along with the prophets, we long to see a time when we "let justice roll down like waters." But what do we mean when we say the word justice? Given that the American criminal justice system has resulted in the largest population of caged people in the history of the world, "justice" often functions as a euphemism for institutionalized vengeance. By sharing the story of his conversion from a prosecutor to a criminal justice reform advocate, Preston Shipp poses crucial political, theological, and social questions about what justice requires of us, how our institutions promote or frustrate human flourishing, and how we hold people who cause harm accountable while leaving room for mercy and redemption.

Preston Shipp, Esq., served as an appellate prosecutor in the Tennessee Attorney General’s office for several years. While serving as a religious volunteer and teaching college classes in Tennessee prisons, he became good friends with many people who were incarcerated, one of whom he had actually prosecuted. These relationships caused Shipp to wake up to the many injustices that are present in the American system of mass incarceration. Unable to reconcile this conflict, Shipp left his career as a prosecutor in 2008. Since then, he has taught in universities and churches, lectured at conferences, and written about the urgent need for criminal justice reform, for a shift in how we regard imprisoned people, and a new vision of justice that seeks healing, transformation, and reconciliation. Shipp now serves as the Associate Policy Director for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.

Registration opens August 1.