Prison, Part 2

This will be brief -- I'm yet again running up to my (admittedly self-imposed) midnight deadline.

The thing about ministry to the incarcerated... well, there are a lot of things about it, but there is such an incredible need for it. Jail and prison are, perhaps on purpose, incredibly dehumanizing institutions, and it is an incredible thing to simply treat an inmate like a person.

Perhaps the most important thing my colleagues and I did as volunteer prison chaplains was to acknowledge that those men had souls. They knew it, for certain, but our presence and willingness to spend time with them in conversation and prayer affirmed it powerfully.

That's one side of it. The other side is that I believe visiting the incarcerated fills a spiritual need that we free folks, living "outside the wall," have. Because, like it or not, we are to some degree responsible for the laws and systems that cause people to go to jail or prison. They are tried and sentenced by "the state," whether one of the 50 or the federal government. And that government is supposed to be accountable to us, its citizens, and we are supposed to be the ones who are protected when people who have committed crimes are sentenced to prison.

So that means they have been incarcerated on our behalf... but most of us don't really know what life in prison is like; even going in and out as a chaplain for months, I probably don't *really* know what it's like. But it is always good for the soul, I think, to see things like this -- even when it's hard (which is most of the time). WE have to know the true cost (as my sister the economist might say) of the policies and systems "we" have put in place and allow to continue.

It's also re-humanizing of free people to connect with people who have committed crimes, because it is all too easy to dismiss the humanity of "criminals" -- and every time we write someone off, a part of us becomes less than human.