There are many ways to get involved in prison ministry, not all of which require face to face contact with inmates. Correspondence can encourage and teach and isn’t dependent on proximity to a custodial centre. Support, both financial and prayer, is vital – prison ministry takes the battle into Satan’s stronghold, a place where many souls are enslaved, and he doesn’t want to relinquish them without a fight. Faithful pray-ers are essential.
However, it is a privilege to be able to go into the prisons and see the difference that hope can make in the lives of those who feel they’ve been abandoned by God and society, all the time remembering Jesus’ instructions to be “as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves” (Matt. 10:16). We approach everyone with the conviction that Jesus can change the hardest heart and reform the most corrupted life but we know that we live in a fallen world and not everyone (particularly in prison) has innocent motives. It’s a long journey from conversion to perfection and old habits can be hard to discard. We aim to bring the truth and cut through lies, searing through self-deception, giving the inmates an alternative to the falsehoods they’ve built their lives upon.
One of the most effective ways of accomplishing this happens during a Restorative Justice course. In my experience with South Africa’s Hope Prison Ministry (www.hopeprisonministry.org; www.facebook.com/hopeprisonministry) I have seen eyes opened and lives changed as inmates are confronted with themselves and their victims. This is an example of how prison ministry can change lives without preaching. We must be creative and courageous.
At first sight, the requirements of a Restorative Justice course seem mountainous. Twenty-four inmates need to be selected and organised to attend sessions for six hours a day, Monday to Saturday, with all the concomitant arrangements for warders, security and bureaucracy. Six volunteer facilitators (one for each table of four inmates) with ideally six assistants are needed, a main session leader and people to organise and bring in lunch from the outside, as an important part of the course is sharing a non-prison food meal at the table. The potential for complications and frustration is immense but with God everything is possible. Exceptions are made to prison rules, minor miracles occur, the paperwork comes through and on the Monday morning twenty-four men are sitting four to a table with their facilitators, wondering what on earth they’ve let themselves in for.
Restorative Justice is a voluntary process. It has to be, just as Jesus doesn’t force himself upon anyone but stands at the door and knocks, waiting for us to open it to him. Motives are mixed for attending. Some participants truly want to change their lives, others see it as a way to get through the parole board hearing, some think it’ll be an easy place to pass around contraband or gang-related communications but, whatever reason brings them initially, no one leaves unaffected.
The first softening comes when inmates who are used so often to being looked on as dirt, find that they are treated with respect as fellow humans: a small thing but powerful. They discover that the table they’ll sit at for the rest of the week is a place of safety where they can realise and share things they’ve never thought of before. The rules are strict: what’s said at the table stays at the table, show respect, and that includes showing enough respect not to lie. If a man isn’t ready to discuss a subject then he should say so, rather than make something up. If you treat someone as a prisoner or delinquent the chances are that’s how he’ll behave. Treat him with respect as someone who is capable of rising to the occasion and he’ll probably try to live up to expectations. Of course this leaves one open to betrayal and disappointment but if no one is given a chance then how will change ever occur?
God is love and Jesus the embodiment of that love, but genuine love does not shy away from hard questions. It’s easy to plaster over the cracks, to hide the wounds under a bandage without first cleaning them out but then the wounds fester and when they break open again the effect is many times worse. Facing up to yourself is an uncomfortable process and we can thank God for his mercy in not revealing all our deficiencies to us at once. The first day of Restorative Justice focuses on the men, helping them to realise that people who’ve been hurt often hurt others in their turn. For some it’s a revelation. In South Africa the legacy of the evil of apartheid is still very strong. An old man who’d been in prison for about fifty years, realised for the first time that his hatred of whites started when he came home from school one day to find that his family had been forcibly removed from their farm: he’d never before made the connection. Another man (sentenced for rape) witnessed the murder of his father by two gangsters when he was six years old. They saw the little boy watching and called over their girlfriends to help tie him up and throw him into the lake to drown. He managed to swim to safety but during Restorative Justice he realised that he’d been taking revenge on women ever since. Those women who’d tried to drown him were mothers and should have been protecting him. They didn’t, and in his mind the seeds of hatred and crime were sown.
There are very few actual psychopaths. Not many children are born with an inability to feel emotion or connect with others. Not many five year olds have a desire to grow up to commit crimes and end up in prison. Something happens. Someone happens. Bad choices are made. Sheep without a shepherd don’t know which way to go (Matt. 9:36). This does not excuse criminal acts, nor nullify their devastating effects. We all need to take honest responsibility for our deeds but sometimes seeing where it all began can be a help in avoiding continually going down the same path.
Day two focuses on victims. Restorative Justice isn’t designed to make inmates feel better about themselves by sticking a plaster on an uncleaned wound. It’s about facing up to what they did, taking responsibility, washing out the dirt. A universal human characteristic since the Fall is putting ourselves at the centre of the universe. To a greater or lesser extent we learn from childhood that the world doesn’t revolve around us but the tendencies towards self-centred selfishness are always below the surface. To many criminals, thinking about others doesn’t come easily. What they want is more important and they don’t often stop to think about the effect their actions have on other people. Restorative Justice forces them to do that with victim testimonies, crime scene photos and an explanation of the ripple effect of crime. Many see themselves as the victim, especially as they’re not happy at being incarcerated, but when the ripples affecting the real victims are made clear and include family, friends, neighbours, emergency services, families of traumatised emergency workers, all the way out to tax-payers, cracks in the self-centred shell start to appear. “My eyes have been opened,” said one participant whose community didn’t condemn his criminal activity as long as it didn’t happen in their area. “I never thought of this before. I didn’t realise I hurt so many people.”
By this stage a relationship of trust has started to grow between men and ministry volunteers. When people who have been sitting and caring stand up to share their experiences of crime, whether that’s rape or burglary, the impact is strong. Jesus sees us as individually loved people. It’s easier to gloss over harm committed against someone labelled as from a different culture, “asking for it” or being “disrespectful”; it’s much harder if that person has a face and a name and can relate the details of the offence as if it happened yesterday. One of the most powerful times of the week is after a rape victim has given her testimony. Many men are incarcerated for rape but hardly spare a thought for the effect it has on their victim. “She’ll get over it,” is a common attitude. Hearing from someone they’re growing to respect about how her life was affected makes them face up to reality. Many will admit that they pleaded not guilty at their rape trial but know that they did it and now want to confess and apologise.
Don't copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. (Romans 12:2)
Thinking patterns, errors and attitudes can be set at an early age, particularly when they conform to the expectations of the world. Followers of Jesus, whose own minds are being transformed by God, need to challenge worldly behaviour and customs. The rest of the Restorative Justice week deals with this, helping the men recognise the thinking errors they fall into, the ways they deceive themselves, the masks they hide behind. A changed life needs to be built on new foundations - honesty, integrity, respect, trust – all of which are required to bring about restoration of life and relationships. We each need to take responsibility for the mess we make, whether we’re incarcerated or not, and do what we can to clean it up.
The Saturday is restoration in action. Each man is given the opportunity to invite a couple of family members. These family members are given the chance to ask any question, anything they want to know that they’ve never felt able to ask in the past, and the men are prepared to answer honestly, no more lies. Many people don’t know if the man actually committed the crime he was sentenced for. The visitors of one man who’d been sentenced for rape and had been in prison for eighteen years, confronted him on the Saturday. “You were in and out of my house,” the husband said. “I treated you like a brother. Now I have young daughters of my own. I don’t know if I can trust you; I don’t want you to come near them. You pleaded not guilty but did you commit the crime?”
The man and his wife had been visiting the prison for the inmate’s whole sentence. Every time they’d wanted to ask if he was guilty; every time they’d returned home not having had the courage to ask.
“Yes, I committed the crime.”
The visitor’s wife stepped forward. “Now you have been honest. You are welcome in my home. On the day of your release there will be a party waiting for you at our house.”
This is what prison ministry can do, without preaching. Jesus is the foundation; he is the only true hope for a changed life and the restoration of our relationships with God and others, in public and in private. He prepares the way, but he invites his followers to meet with him in all spheres of life, from government to prison.
There are many opportunities to show Jesus’ love to inmates. A Christian sacrificing time and effort to teach literacy or life-skills. Turning up regularly and transferring a skill that could help find an honest job on the outside. Holiness doesn’t have to be impractical or theoretical. Jesus was a carpenter. It’s possible that he never talked about God as he worked but it’s hardly likely. Christians in business can show how it’s possible to succeed in a way that honours God and doesn’t cut corners.
Prison ministry doesn’t end on the day a man’s released. Many of those who genuinely desire to leave their lives of crime are drawn back into criminality and gaol due to lack of support on the outside. Churches need to look beyond a man’s past and help him become what God knows he can be. Too often the door is shut and bolted instead. We’re back to “shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves” – give a man a chance but don’t take stupid risks. Live in the abundance and abandonment of Jesus’ love, seasoned with the discernment of the Holy Spirit.
Every prisoner whose life is changed by God’s forgiveness is one who will break the cycle of crime through the generations. Think of the difference in communities if youth didn’t join gangs to find the love their own family denied; if people trusted God to provide instead of stealing what they wanted; if Jesus’ followers reached out to and discipled the lost. It could take many years to make a change but it has to start somewhere.
Practical Christianity is about bringing Jesus and healing into lives that have wrecked communities in the past and have the potential to continue doing so in the future. It’s about binding up the wounded and comforting the broken-hearted. It’s learning how to worship from those who truly know what it means to be forgiven much. It’s pointing the way towards the One who can set the captives free, even if they’ll still be behind physical bars for the twenty years left on their sentence.
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