Have you seen a gangster cry?
It happens regularly when Hope Prison Ministry facilitates the Restorative Justice process. Men who have murdered, raped, tortured others are reduced to tears when confronted with the reality of the damage they've caused. Even for senior members of the feared prison gangs, when the walls of self-centredness, the protective barriers of lack of feeling, anger, violence, entitlement are broken down they have to face themselves and their deeds and they weep.
That marks the start of something new.
Most of the men don't like the lives they live. They've been abused and they abuse in their turn; they feel deprived and they deprive others of goods, peace, life, but they long for something better. The tragedy is they often don't know how to get it.
Restorative Justice is a start. It helps them to see where they've come from, the mess they've caused and dragged others into and the changes they have to make in themselves in order to be the men they were created to be. It offers support and encouragement in the successes and failures but most of all it offers hope. We can all try to change in our own strength and the Restorative Justice process is open to all religions and none, but without God's help change does not go deep enough.
We see miracles in every course. Men breaking down as their mothers talk of love, hurt and despair. Men deciding to take responsibility after decades and admitting that they were actually guilty of the crime they'd been sentenced for. Men restoring relationships and determining to be better sons, husbands and fathers; this time with more than just empty promises.
2020 has been difficult as the prisons in South Africa were closed to visitors but wherever one door closes.... If we couldn't offer Restorative Justice to inmates then we could run a course for those released on parole. That brought its own challenges, not least that our participants were no longer a "captive audience", but as usual God did amazing things in the lives of the men who came. By the second day one man had decided to return the goods he'd stolen from his neighbour and to apologise to her. The same day another man resolved to tell his mother the truth after thirteen years of lies - he had been guilty, although he'd always claimed innocence. On the final day another man brought a bag of mobile phones he'd stolen from people on a train before he'd been caught and imprisoned. He wanted to make amends and return them, he didn't want anything from his former life holding him back as he tried to change. Other men were having to resist the invitations of old gang colleagues coming regularly to their homes to entice them back into drugs and crime.
The men admitted these challenges and were open about the temptations they face daily. When we do the process in prisons there's a certain amount of unrealistic thinking. They have ideas about what life will be like outside and how they'll fit in. Men on parole are actually facing the real issues.
Our first Community Restorative Justice in Paarl in November will hopefully not be our last. Certainly we want the restrictions to ease so we can get back to ministering to those in prison but the need definitely doesn't end there.
