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Hindsight for Tomorrow Series
System Factors in EffectiveRehabilitation of Ex-Inmatesby Benny McCracken, D.Min.To better understand a part of my own spiritual journey, my doctoral research focused on The Impact Of God-Image On Self-Esteem. Raised in the home of a Baptist minister in what was, in the 1950's, a remote part of the Ozark mountains in north central Arkansas, I was fed a voluminous diet of hellfire and damnation preaching. The God of my childhood was a wrathful, judgmental and demanding deity who was ready and willing to correct and punish his errant children. He was a God who demanded rigid obedience to a set of culturally derived do's and don'ts. Grace and mercy had little to do with the salvific process. Through the course of my theological education I somehow avoided adopting the God-image of my childhood. I often wondered how I had arrived at my understanding of God as a God of grace and hope. It was not until I encountered a book by Ana-Maria Rizzuto entitled, The Birth of the Living God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) that I began to understand my own pilgrimage with God. Rizzuto postulates that the god-image we carry into adulthood is the result of our relational experiences with significant others in our early developmental years. My father completed the sixth grade in a one room mountain school in 1910. During the depression of the 1930's, my mother, sister, and he eked out a living on a small farm in the Ozarks. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he came to know a God who was worshiped for His grace and not from fear of judgment or retribution. It was my early encounter with this fatherly "God of Grace and God of Glory" that prepared and led me to a nearly twenty year ministry in a state correctional system. During the first fifteen years of that ministry, which included my D.Min. project, I was the chaplain for a state juvenile correctional facility which housed 200 adjudicated male youth between the ages of fifteen and eighteen years. The final five years of my ministry in the correctional setting was served in an adult male institution. This was a more diverse population of inmates, ranging from newly committed individuals to the primary mental health treatment program, to the department medical hospital and a sex offender treatment program. I soon discovered an entirely different theme and attitude emerging than I had experienced in my clinical training in psychiatric hospitals/community mental health centers and in my first five years of ministry in a local church. In the correctional setting it became apparent that love, including God's love, is frequently communicated as a call to accept their responsibility for the criminal behavior which they had committed. The first tendency among the majority of inmates, youth or adults, is to deny their guilt, to make excuses for their behavior, to blame circumstances or other individuals for their plight, and to refuse to face the consequences of their crime(s) on themselves and their victim(s). In this environment an honest application of the gospel to life must begin with an emphasis on Judgment. The dynamics of the correctional environment enhances the need to root a message of forgiveness and acceptance in a message of Judgment. Obviously, prison is a place of intense and harsh judgment. Inmates have been judged not only by the Court but also by family, friends, society, and in many cases their own church. Correctional officers as well as fellow prisoners harass and haze inmates on the basis of their committing offense. The unspoken assumption of administration and staff is that the prison environment should be punitive rather than rehabilitative. In a survey conducted by the chaplaincy staff approximately 80% of the inmate population had religious roots in either a Baptist or Pentecostal heritage. In the rural South these two traditions generally proclaim a wrathful and judgmental image of the Holy. Consequently, the majority of inmates view God as one who has already posed a negative judgment, not only on their crime but also on their personal worth and value. In this setting it would appear that the last thing an inmate needs to hear from God's representative is that God also judges him. The hypothesis of my D. Min. project was that, "An inadequate and unhealthy concept of both God and self is a contributing factor to the dysfunctional thinking and behavior of the youth (adults) committed to the institution." It is a constant struggle to bring the reality of God's love and grace into this setting of judgment and condemnation. The project also hypothesized, and proved, that when an individual's God-image is enhanced, so too is his self esteem. It goes without saying that these two dynamics, a positive God-image and a healthy self-esteem, are crucial to the effective rehabilitation of an incarcerated individual. How then in this environment is the gospel to be seen as bringing hope and healing to the broken lives of the incarcerated? Judgment, delivered in the wrong spirit, would only reinforce the inmate's dysfunctional perception of God and drive him farther from the wholeness which he needs. Hence, the challenge of ministry in this punitive environment is to help the inmate discover the reality of God's Judgment as a positive, redemptive act of Grace. In short, it is a challenge of integrity, to be lovingly honest with the inmate and true to the message of Scripture. This challenge is complicated by the expectations placed on the correctional Chaplain by the inmates and staff, especially in the adult center. On the one hand the Chaplain is expected to abide by the rules and regulations of the institution and on the other hand to meet the needs and requests of the inmate. The conflict arises when the inmate's request is in violation of institutional policy. My experience was that both staff and inmates expected the Chaplain to magically find or create a way to do both. Unfortunately, the "concern" of the correctional staff is not altruistically motivated. The correctional staff's principal motivation is driven by the desire to control and manage the inmate population. This results in the expectation that the treatment staff will do whatever is necessary to appease the inmate and his request, even to the point of violating the rules if necessary. For example, department regulations mandated that any "printed materials...i.e. books, Bibles, etc." received by an inmate must be mailed directly from the publisher or verifiable bookstore. It was the Chaplain's responsibility to authenticate that any religious materials received by an inmate complied with departmental regulations. This aspect of the policy had arisen in response to attempts by inmates to import drugs and "green money" into the prison by inserting the contraband into the spine or binding of the books. Weekly I was required to inform inmates that their books/Bibles did not meet institutional requirements for in-coming reading materials. Within 30 minutes of informing one inmate of my decision the Assistant Warden was in my office demanding that I give this inmate his Bible. When I reminded him of the policy he replied, "I don't care. I want him to have it." I learned later that the inmate was the Assistant Warden's personal house-boy. This scenario was repeated regularly to reward favored inmates or cover up the misdeeds of "certain" staff. This dichotomy of expectations falls into direct contradiction with my perceived pastoral role which begins with the redemptive judgment of helping the inmate develop a sense of responsibility and accountability. What I am expected to do in this setting in no way contributes to helping the inmate formulate a positive God- or self-image. In fact, it will only foster the sick and dysfunctional thinking which has brought him into the correctional system in the first place. A second conflict in developing ministry in this environment centers around the perception of the inmate as a useless and worthless individual, both by the inmate himself and by the correctional staff. In the punitive mentality of the institution the inmate is seen as synonymous with his crime. There is no understanding of this individual as a unique creation of God with worth and dignity. In an atmosphere permeated by the correctional staff's fear of loss of control it is difficult to establish a basic therapeutic/pastoral relationship out of which effective ministry grows. An inmate who attempts to initiate positive changes in his life is immediately placed under suspicion and his harassment is intensified. In this malaise of dichotomous roles and expectations I found ministry, at least as I understood it, to be virtually impossible. What I understood at the time to be the constant demand to compromise my integrity and the gospel's was more than I was willing to do. Fortunately, the majority of this conflict arose in the adult, rather than youth, correctional setting. I left that facility feeling that, for the first time in my ministry, I had failed. I have tried for almost two years to evaluate my own contribution to my failure to establish the kind of relationship with the correctional staff in which ministry could happen. So far, objectivity has not been my strong suite! What I am beginning to see grow out of this failure is a new opportunity for ministry in my new community of faith and life. I have moved to a small mountain community in the northern Rocky mountains of Montana. It is a community driven by tourism and supported by hundreds of seasonal workers, many of whom are ex-inmates. Since moving here I have learned that the community has a reputation of being a place where an individual can "start over." Jobs in the resort industry are abundant and workers are few. Therefore, no one asks questions about the past. As my "fame" in the community grows, I am increasingly brought into contact with ex-offenders in our community who are seeking to make a new start at life. I regularly receive referrals from other ministers as well as employers to work with these individuals. For the first time in many years I feel that I have the opportunity to communicate God's grace to them in a meaningful and effective way. I hope to continue learning from the mistakes I made in those years at the adult correctional facility. I am also beginning to learn a valuable lesson from the ex-inmates with whom I work. Just as I am trying to help them learn not to evaluate their life on the basis of their criminal record, so I too am learning that a lifetime of ministry, punctuated with mistakes and failures, should not be evaluated on the basis of one's mistakes. God's redemptive Judgment allows us all new beginnings.
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| Last Updated on Monday, 22 September 2008 14:43 |
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