The power of having faith in prisons

Earlier this week, the Christian Science Monitor had this interesting piece about positive reforms in a notoroius state prison.  Here are snippets from the article:

Seen from the outside, the 5,108 permanent residents of Angola, La., are murderers, kingpins, and sex offenders. But inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary here, many of these black sheep of society lead shadow lives as artists, newspaper editors, country singers, and, five times a year, stars of a prison rodeo and arts-and-crafts fair….

Some 1,000 Angola inmates are the beneficiaries of Warden Burl Cain’s faith-based system of earned privileges that, in the past decade, has turned Angola from one of history’s meanest lockups into one of the most peaceable high-security prisons in America.  It’s a feat all the more remarkable, experts say, because Angola in some ways defines futility: Ninety percent of its inmates will never leave this razor-fenced bend in the Mississippi River.

“The warden puts purposes out there for prisoners to attach themselves to, and that’s what you need,” says Angola “lifer” Lane Nelson, the death-row correspondent for the Angolite, the prison newsmagazine. Truth-in-sentencing and mandatory-sentencing laws that became popular in the mid-1980s have driven a population explosion in US prisons. This has created a warehousing ethos, critics say, and a series of lawsuits have focused on nonviolent and first-time offenders getting placed into dangerous high-security wings because of overcrowding….

At Angola, 51 percent of the lifers are first-time offenders. “Most prisons always operate on hope, and when you start having sentencing reforms, you start taking away a lot of hope,” says Larry Sullivan, a criminology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Against that backdrop, Angola’s system of “manufactured hope” — epitomized by its rodeo — provides a unique blueprint for achieving at least a balm for increasingly restive prison populations, if not always rehabilitation, some experts say. “Many prison problems are just growing, so it is nice to see trends like this where correctional officials are looking at new ways of providing a safe and secure place for prisoners. That also has potential to give prisoners real opportunities to be productive,” says Jody Kent, policy director at the National Prison Project in Washington….

Reforms include a theology college where inmates train to become prison chaplains, a TV station that produces documentaries and hard news, a kind of Santa’s toyshop, and a wheelchair refurbishing shop. The Angolite is the least-censored prison publication in the country and reaches 1,500 outside subscribers.  An annual family picnic for inmates with kids and expanded hospice care for elderly and ailing inmates boost morale, inmates say.