What do we do with people after we have decided they are guilty?

Forgiveness is easy to admire in principle. It becomes much harder when the person asking for mercy has actually done something wrong.

In Chaplain to the Guilty, former Anglican priest and frontline mental health professional David Giffen explores guilt, punishment, dignity, forgiveness, and redemption through the lives of people society is often most comfortable writing off.

Drawing on pastoral experience, crisis work, and lived experience, David challenges audiences to consider whether accountability must always end in exclusion—and whether redemption means anything if we reserve it only for people whose failures make us comfortable.

Dignity is not innocence. Forgiveness is not an excuse. Redemption does not erase consequences. And reconciliation is never something another person is owed.

Through candid storytelling, theological reflection, and practical insight, David examines how leaders, faith communities, and organizations can hold people accountable without reducing them permanently to the worst thing they have done.

Audiences leave with:

• A clearer understanding of how accountability and human dignity can coexist

• A framework for distinguishing punishment, forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption

• Practical insight into leading people who carry stigma after wrongdoing

• A deeper understanding of how exclusion can complicate recovery and reintegration

• Spiritual and philosophical perspectives for navigating moral complexity without easy answers

Chaplain to the Guilty is for audiences willing to wrestle with one of the hardest questions in leadership, faith, and community: what happens after guilt has been established—and who gets to come back?