14 Responses to “prison reform”

1. 1
   cheryl Says:
   February 10th, 2006 at 8:32 pm

   i love this, greg.

   i’m just starting to spend a bit of time in the women’s prison (though i go there voluntarily, and i get to go home at the end of the day). it only took 10 minutes of being there the first day to realise that all my (subconscious) preconceptions about what ‘prisoners’ were like were wrong. Not that they’re angels (obviously), but that they shouldn’t be defined only by whatever they did to put them in prison. That’s only a tiny bit of their story.

   many of them were determined to come out of prison stronger, but the prison system wasn’t helping with that. it would be by their sheer courage and strength alone.

   and i love your song. i’ve long thought the most immediately redeeming thing about Jesus’ death was that it showed God was willing to go to hell. That’s a good thing for me to know when i go there.

2. 2
   Janet McKinney Says:
   February 11th, 2006 at 4:53 am

   “is that it seems to me that it’s in the pain and hurt that we experience, that we find God is trully there with us. When we fail to respect other peoples pain we are in effect failing to acknowledge that place where they find God to be the most real - to be the one who heals, to be the one who forgives and leads us by still waters and through the valley of the shadow of death.””

   I love this statement - and agree wholeheartedly. Sometimes we do everything to avoid the pain, or dull the pain, but it is IN the pain that God is.

   Blessings
   Janet McK

3. 3
   Greg the explorer Says:
   February 11th, 2006 at 6:53 pm

   “many of them were determined to come out of prison stronger, but the prison system wasn’t helping with that. it would be by their sheer courage and strength alone.” Cheryl - post 1

   The funniest thing about what is called in NSW ‘The Corrections System” is that not a whole lot of money is spent on things that can help prison inmates or (as prison ministry organisation KAIROS refers to people as)residents correct their lives!

   Prisons are called correctional institutions but instead they are breading grounds for angry men and women who having been told by society that they are not worthy to live in society are then expected to re-enter and live positively whithin the same society that has thrown them away!

   I did a program in gaol called KAIROS. It is a Christian prison ministry that runs a 3 day initial program and then weekly programs over the next 6 mths. Through that ministry I met lots of people who had previously had a “lock ‘em all up and throw away the key” mentality. This was changed by meeting some prisoners and realising that they too were humans and had whole histories that had led up to them being sentenced to gaol.

   I don’t excuse either my own past behiour or that of other prisoners, but the regular “get touigh on crime” and “throw away the key” calls by politicians don’t even begin to look at the real resons or the real remedies for crime in the community.

   Case in point - how did two 13 year old girls end up as murderers? Just asking the question

4. 4
   Greg the explorer Says:
   February 11th, 2006 at 7:10 pm

   Thanks to the Phil for this thread as well - I didn’t actually think you’d do a thread on prison reform.

   Another thing I’ve found is that, as Cheryl pints out, any change that occurs in arpisoners life or attitude is 90% due to their own work - which I guess any change has to be - but it certainly is not due to the environment of prison. Prisons in Australia must change the way they treat inmates and must change the environment for them ot properly be called “Corrections Centres”!

5. 5
   cheryl Says:
   February 12th, 2006 at 4:49 pm

   i’d be really interested to hear what sort of system you think might work, Greg - what would have helped you be ready to go back into society different?

6. 6
   Janet McKinney Says:
   February 12th, 2006 at 5:51 pm

   Greg
   I am please KAIROS was helpful for you - I went to an Emmaus weekend last yearm and it was profound.

   Bless you
   Janet McK

7. 7
   KenOath Says:
   February 13th, 2006 at 6:07 pm

   I’m wondering if people could comment on the purpose of prisons. Are they simply to protect society from dangerous criminals (obviously not true in all cases), provide punishment and possibly provide optional correction? Or has the focus moved away from punishment to correction?

   I would question whether prisons could ever be the best method for correction. How can an environment so different from how normal society operates foster positive change in prisoners? Any improvement must primarily come from prisoners’ own motivation, as Greg indicates.

   What is punishment and why is it required? Are there better alternative models? For example are there methods of behavioural modification which lead to positive outcomes for all, but which do not have any punishment aspect?

8. 8
   alan Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 8:51 pm

   Prisons are the bread and butter of the radio shock jocks.In the past couple of days the press has carried 3 reports which give some insight into the “purpose” of prisons.
   In WA a law review has called for the end of the 3 strikes policy)caught breaking and entering 3 timesthen straight to prison.Aboriginal kids are locked up by the scores,because the same kind of alternative avenues for helping the white kids are not available for black kids.
   In todays melb Age it is reported that one in 7 mentally ill patients discharged from hospitals are back in within 28 days.Shortage of beds,no community support outside the hospital,few resources are the cause.
   A couple of pages later Greg Barnes (”Shock jock policies are driving the mentally ill into jails”(Age 14.2.06)writes that “mental illness and the prison system go hand in glove……judges are being forced to incarcerate individuals with mental illness because govts pandering to radio shock jocks and other populist media are obsessed with winning the law and order debate”
   Ho goes on to give some stats:
   NSW: 40% of prison inmates suffered a mental illness;1 in 20 attempted suicide
   Vic:36% of prisoners suffer some form of mental illness
   SA: 60% of the states prisoners are suffering from some form of mental illnes.
   Some of the so called “institutional” church struggle with a system of prison chaplains and pleading with govts to do something,there are scattered Colson ( of watergate fame)type programs,parent groups wear themselves out in frustration and despair,and by and large it seems to me the churches sit with the shock jocks.And issues like this seem to have difficulty squeezing into the emerging church agenda.

9. 9
   Greg the explorer Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 9:35 pm

   Alan, you are quite right with regard to the law and prison system pandering to the “shock jocks”. When I was in gaol I used to watch “Beauty and the Beast” with the shocoingest jock of them all Stan Zumaneck. Jeanie Little was on this particular time and the subject of how easy prisoners got it while they were in gaol came up.

   Jeanie said prisoners got it “soooooo easy” (imagine her whiny voice saying that) - three meals a day, room and board tv - it was like checking in to a motel! While I was listening to her crapo on I was eating my meal out of an alfoil tray (like the ones you get at take away chicken shops) that had been coocked and frozen about 2 weeks earlier in Silverwater Gaol and then transported to and stored at Cessnock Gaol where I was. The potato was not real it was that premix stuff. It was the same meal variations every week - fish that was as dry as a…well you know what, meat patties that were drowned in some sort of gravy like substance that tried to disguise the fact that we were really eating the arse end of a horse that had died two years earlier in a paddock in easter europe after being buggered by a team of starving peasants! If I’d checked into a motel I wanted my money back!

   The average prisoner earns about $20 per week working for Correction Service Industries (CSI) for 5 days per week, usually from about 8.30 to 2pm dong such things as making prison clothes, working in metal shops and refurbishing school demountables, making furniture and other “jobs”

   The prison system says it’s about corrections but puts most of its money into CSI and not into education programs that could get people ready to gain employment upon release or to follow up further study outside. In fact while I was inside money was taken away from education ad drug counselling services!

   For the most part I think the church; established or otherwise sees prison reform as being in the too hard basket. The Anglican diocese of Newcastle in NSW provides two prison chaplains (Cessnock and Musswelbrook Gaols) as well as the Coordinatoing Chaplain for the entire NSW prison system - Rod Moore.

   I cannot speak highly enough of Rod Moore - he kept me sane when he was just the chaplain for Cessnock Gaol. He started a project at Cessnock Gaol called the “Phoenix Project” which was designed to provide inmatges who wanted to work on themselves an environment whitin the prison to do so. The project took up an entire level of one of the wings in the Gaol and guys who lived on that level of the wing were expected to participate in a certain number of progeams each week. here’s a link for info

   http://www.dcs.nsw.gov.au/offender_management/offender_management_in_custody/correctional_centres/cessnock.asp

   It worked so well that it was a model adopted for use in other prisons.

   http://www.humankindness.org/

10. 10
    alan Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 12:03 pm

    As the prison system has become privatised in Australia( a couple of companies one in the USA and the other in Europe now control most of the private systems in the world)so the push has cme for profits.A few years back I was involved in a case where a company discovered that a prison operator had taken all their patterns for a certain product and begun production in the prison using cheap labour.The company a responsible employer(proper wages,working conditions etc) couldnt compete faced with such competition.
    Unions(no support from the church) around the world have attempted thru the International Labour Org to expose the practice of comapnies making excesive profits exploiting prisoners.In the USA whole factories are backed on to prisons, odds are if you’re making an airline booking it will be done by a prisoner somewhere or other etc.
    Recently it was reported that the companies(the same ones operating prisons) running Aust detention centres for asylumn seekers were found to have lied to govt about the services they were delivering.
    It continues to fascinate me how the church spends time and bucks brawling about women and ordination,gay members and sexuality,members threaten to leave the church on such issues but on the issue of mental illness or prisons, deafening silence.
    I dont think its put in the too hard basket, I think its really no one gives a bugger.
    In the USA rather than become involved in any campaign to counter the evil and racism of the prison system,the evangelical church sees prisons ripe unto harvest. A whole lot easier than confronting govt sin.

11. 11
    cheryl Says:
    May 18th, 2006 at 8:43 pm

    just wanting to open this up again…

    i’ve been spending a fair bit of time over the last few weeks in different prisons around the state. i spent this afternoon at port phillip prison, in the section where men with intellectual disabilities / psych illnesses live.

    it was the most soul destroying place i think i’ve been.

    i’m going into prisons to work with chaplains and residents, mostly developing some new forms of worship that take the context and environment of prison seriously, but also looking at how we can shape communities that will be helpful in post-release.

    oddly, most of the prisons i’ve gone into have left me feeling quite hopeful - i kept encountering extraordinary resilience. today, in the company of these men who are always on the fringe of society, and who now find themselves locked up for years, to be forgotten, i just came away despairing. i know this sounds silly, but the thing i found saddest was realising that there’s nothing soft in prison. that sounds strange, but everything is hard - all the chairs are hard and uncomfortable. there are no lounges (even in the lodges in low security prisons), the mattresses are hard, there are no cushions. if you’re there for 25 years (and most of the men i met today are there for very long periods of time), there is no place you will ever be able to relax, where you will ever feel comfortable. i know that sounds trite, but it made me despair.

    what is the gospel in this place? if you know you’re forgiven, you know you’re loved by god, how do you make your peace with this terrible, soul-destroying place?

12. 12
    Greg the explorer Says:
    May 18th, 2006 at 10:34 pm

    Wow, you write as only one who has seen inside a prison can write. And you are right - there is nowhere you can relax in prison -it’s when you do relax tht crazy shit happpens and you realise it was a mistake to relax.

    Yet prison can be a place of renewal, of hope, of beauty inspite of the harsh realities of ever present threat, iminent danger, (and that’s just from the food! LOL).

    The gospel is found in people Cheryl, people like yourself who feel the pain and the heartache that quite often prisoners themselves can’t allow themselves to feel for themselves. The gospel is in the acceptance and love and compassion shown - in recognising the person behind the crime; the person behind the prison greens.

    The prison system needs peopoe like you who feel the despair and yet cling to hope, who cling to Christ and show Christ to those who don’t believe he is there for them.

13. 13
    dan Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 12:34 pm

    Sometimes I feel like I can’t even get to the prison debate because the law and order debate is so fixated on scape-goating and enforcing the distance between “us” and “them”. No wonder then that prisons can be scary dehumanising places.

    The difficulty is that it just seems like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. We have an unwillingness as a society to take responsibility for holistic responses to crime and punishment. We prefer to isolate simple single factor cause and effects so that we can draw a line under the problem and say that things are changing.

    I think that prison reform should be imaginative and spectacular. Imagine a prison system with elite training colleges - prisoners would be entitled to apply for a spot but their continued participation would be subject to strict requirements for behaviour and responsibility. Don’t leave those that are working hard behaving well and improving themselves in the same situation as those that are resigned to a life of crime. This will never be acceptable because it would be seen as being too cushy and generous to crims.

14. 14
    Janet McKinney Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 3:55 pm

    I have been agonising in my soul about the latest reports of abuse and violence to indigenous women and children in communities. Ohhhhh it is a hard issue. So often people say they should be caught and locked up, but the prison system does not work (it would seem) for indigenous males.

    I have no answers - just a lot of heart break. 25 years ago when I was living on indigenous remote communities, I knew children as young as 5 or 6 who had STIs. It was not unusual to see a woman you loved come cone morning with bruises everywhere, and broken limbs. It is heartbreaking

    Janet McKinney