c. 2003 Religion News Service
(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J., and a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J.)
(UNDATED) At 7:15 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 28, the code alarm sounded in the prison where I serve as chaplain. It was followed immediately by an announcement directing all available corrections officers to assist in breaking up a fight in the prison’s mess hall.
The effect of this incident was, among other things, to delay the beginning of the Protestant worship service I was to conduct that morning.
Yet when I arrived at the multipurpose room where our church services are held, I found 15 inmates _ church workers assigned to prepare the room for the service _ already engaged in worship. It was as if they had determined to block out the violence and insanity of prison life and look toward heaven.
For most people, the notion that prison inmates can experience and enjoy a sincere religious faith is inconceivable. It evokes visions of “jailhouse conversions” faked by streetwise con artists seeking to deceive naive religious volunteers.
Though this is certainly the case in some instances, the reality is that such situations constitute the exception rather than the rule.
While the reasons for this are many and varied, they ultimately revolve around the sociological phenomenon known as the “inmate code.”
Similar to its counterparts in other subcultures, the inmate code is an unwritten amalgam of truisms, precepts and principles that both reflect and define prison life and culture. Among its many uses, the code provides an informal yet palpable standard by which inmates govern themselves and each other.
For example, among inmates, respect is the currency de rigeur. Respect can be obtained through a variety of means, but without it an individual is a sheep among wolves. Interestingly, sincere religious conversion is generally respected _ even by those who are not religious. However, a hypocrite gets no respect, and is, in fact, reviled.
Thus, a jailhouse convert who is insincere about his faith runs the risk of being deemed a hypocrite _ a Judas _ and maligned or shunned by true believers.
The point here is to demonstrate that like all cultures, prison culture is very sophisticated, reflecting the complexity of the persons who comprise it.
Some, for example, choose to continue the behaviors that led to their incarceration in the first place. Others, like the men who conducted the impromptu worship service, are literally attempting to begin their lives anew. Between those two extremes are thousands of men and women who are simply trying to make the best of a bad situation.
It is a situation made worse by the fact that 96 percent of all prisoners will eventually be released into the outside world.
Yet in the same way that most people have misconceptions about prison and prisoners, many of the people developing the nation’s criminal justice policies simply don’t have a clue. For what is at stake is more than simply locking people up and throwing away the key.
Rather, the way we approach crime, incarceration, corrections and re-entry constitutes a gauge by which to determine the effectiveness of our entire social policy strategy.
Issues such as education, employment, housing and health care are concerns, not only for the working poor and chronically unemployed, but also for the thousands of newly released ex-offenders whose inability to deal with such needs led to their incarceration in the first place.
These are complex issues requiring a coordinated approach to meeting a broad array of human needs. We need to face the issues squarely, with an eye toward separating fiction from reality.
RNS END ATCHISON
