Editor’s note: Restorative Justice Week has been marked for the past 20 years by the ecumenical organization that co-ordinates Christian chaplaincy in Canada’s federal prisons. This year, the Nov. 14-21 event comes on the heals of sweeping changes in how criminals are sentenced and how they are reintegrated into society. The Catholic Register looks at how the Church works with prisoners as they re-enter our world.Prison isn’t philosophy class. They’re not asking what it means to be human. Nor is it a great place to form community, to discover your humanity by sharing your experience with others.
And once you’re outside, most people want to categorize you by the charges you faced in court, said Rowe.
“I’m native. I didn’t realize I was native until I was inside,” he said.
Living in a halfway house, Rowe is still under the supervision of the prison system. But Rowe believes he’s found the hints of a new direction in his life through the Friends of Dismas, an ecumenical restorative justice ministry that is nothing more than a community of ex-cons and volunteers who meet every couple of weeks to share a meal and consider the Gospel. In that context the Friends of Dismas will link former prisoners with volunteer opportunities.
Dismas was the good thief who hung beside Jesus on Calvary and asked to be remembered (Lk. 23:39-43).
“(The Friends of Dismas) helped me realize that even me, being a criminal, there are people who will care for me as a person,” said Rowe. “My past, my convictions, weren’t as important as who I was as a person.”Volunteer ministries such as the Friends of Dismas might not sound tough on crime the way minimum sentences and billions for new prisons do, but if Canadians want to have a serious discussion about what prevents crime, makes communities safer and rehabilitates ex-offenders they need to look closely at how ex-offenders are reintegrated, Whitehorse Bishop Gary Gordon told The Catholic Register.
“A lot of things are far less demeaning and far more helpful in terms of the restoration process (than incarceration),” said Gordon, who has spent more than 20 years ministering in jails in British Columbia and the North. “The controlling factor of course in the public media mind is fear.”
Christians are supposed to base their lives on Scripture, not fear, said the bishop.
“The vision of justice we find in Scripture is profound,” Gordon wrote in an Oct. 1 letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper decrying the government’s singleminded focus on more jail time. “We are called to be a people in relationship with each other through our conflicts and sins, with the ingenious creativity of God’s Spirit to find our way back into covenant community. How can that be if we automatically exclude and cut ourselves off from all those we label criminal?”
“Our government believes in putting public safety and the rights of victims and law-abiding Canadians first,” a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews wrote in an e-mail to The Catholic Register.
“Jamming up our jails and our prisons has not proven to reduce crime rates,” said Liberal Justice critic Marlene Jennings. “It actually can make communities less safe.”
The Liberals only voted for the government’s package of tough-on-crime legislation to avoid an election over the summer, said Jennings. A Liberal government would have another look at the place of jail time in how we deal with crime and initiate a review of the entire criminal code — which hasn’t been reviewed in more than a quarter century.
Talking to churches about what they’ve learned in prison chaplaincy would be part of a Liberal second look at prison and crime, said Jennings.
“They have the expertise. The chaplains, the priests are in the prisons every day,” she said.
But trying to repair the damage done by crime isn’t just the job of politicians, the prison system or professional chaplains, said Deacon Mike Walsh of the Friends of Dismas. Walsh thinks that if you’re Christian you have to take prisoners seriously. He can’t read Matthew 25 any other way.
“We have Catholic parishes in the suburbs working with men who in some cases have very seriously offended,” said Walsh. “To let them know that there might be people who would actually come and share a meal with them, it’s not a big thing, but it makes a difference.”
Traditional prison ministry, particularly in the provincial jails, has become more difficult over the years. Prisoners are in the system for a short time, they are frequently transferred and prisons are often locked down. Getting more than a couple meetings with a prisoner has become difficult and building trust is a remote possibility.
But outside the prisons, groups like the Friends of Dismas offer a chance for a constructive relationship with an ex-offender.
“I understand the political side of this. I understand the need for safety in communities,” said Walsh. “But understand this: Once you return people from these institutions the work of reintegration still needs to get done.”
New sentencing and parole rules will increase prison populations 30 per cent, according to Howard Sapers, federal ombudsman for prisons. Community chaplaincy is going to be a booming business.
“The needs of those who are coming out of prison and are trying to get back into the community are there,” said Richard Haughian, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ delegate to the Church Council on Justice and Corrections. “It’s not just visiting someone in prison. It’s looking at the community itself and its responsibility.”
Jail facts Prison and Crime Stats:
- Restorative Justice week, sponsored by the Church Council on Justice and Correction and Correctional Service of Canada, runs Nov. 14 to 21 this year. Canadians rely on the police, courts and prisons to deal with crime. Some facts about the prison system and violent crime and prison populations in Canada.
- In 2008/2009 Canada put just under 371,800 adults in jail, virtually unchanged from the year before.
- It costs $323 per day to keep a prisoner in a federal jail, or about $117,700 per year.
- Provincial jails, which take in 97 per cent of convicts, can house a prisoner for an average of $59,100 per year.
- More than 40 per cent of prisoners haven't yet been convicted of a crime. They are admitted on remand while awaiting trial.
- The costs of running all Canada's prison systems combined rose last year by seven per cent after inflation is taken into account. The cost of running the federal prisons is rising faster than costs at the provincial level.
- Police solved 454 homicides last year. They reported 610 new homicides, virtually unchanged from 2008.
- The homicide rate for Canada (murders per 100,000 population) has remained steady since 1999 after a long period of decline from its high in 1973.
- In 2009 14 per cent of murder victims were killed by their spouse, 19 per cent by another member of their family, 39 per cent by an acquaintance.
- Less than one fifth of murders are committed by strangers and less than 10 per cent by criminal associates.
- The most common murder weapon is a knife. There were 210 stabbing victims versus 179 killed by gunfire.
- About a quarter of the firearm homicides were committed using a shotgun or sawed-off shotgun. Of the firearms recovered by police 31 per cent were registered.
- Provincially, Manitoba has the highest homicide rate. The murder capital of Canada is the metropolitan area of Abbotsford and Mission, B.C.
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