The following story first appeared in the Spring 2002 Glenmary Challenge.
For a free copy of the next issue

Ministering Behind Bars
Rural Prisons Are the Fastest-Growing Home Mission Territory
By Father John S. Rausch

The burgeoning prison population in Glenmary missions has added a compelling ministry to rural America. Sister Christine Beckett, president of the Glenmary Sisters, says, “Prisons are the fastest-growing home mission territory in the United States today.”

Sister Chris volunteers as Catholic chaplain for the maximum security prison at Eddyville, Ky. “It’s Jesus’ mandate,” she reflects. “We must love the marginalized and the forgotten. Where the Church has little or no presence—that’s where we go as missioners. Our ministry in prison is presence.”

While violent crime in the United States has declined about 20 percent in the last decade, the number of people in jail or prison has risen approximately 50 percent. A snapshot of the prison population, now at 2 million, shows about 70 percent illiterate, perhaps 200,000 suffering from serious mental illness and 60 to 80 percent with a history of substance abuse. What society attempted to address in the past with anti-poverty efforts, education, health and addiction programs, it now lumps together in the brutalizing prison system.

Thursdays have become “Catholic day” at Eddyville. Though only a handful of the 800 inmates practice the Catholic faith, Sister Chris listens to both inmates and staff members as she ministers throughout the whole prison. On weeks when she can arrange a Mass, nine of the 36 inmates on death row attend. As chaplain, Sister Chris can bring her gentle ministry to every part of the prison, even solitary confinement: “We actually had ‘one in the hole’ baptized and confirmed there.”

With a Personal Touch

When Jesus identified with the incarcerated in Matthew 25, he ignored the subtle distinctions between county jails and supermax prisons. Deacon Charles Andrus, serving Glenmary’s mission in Warren, Ark., began his prison ministry at the state penitentiary in Grady. But now he focuses on the Bradley County jail, where inmates await trial or serve shorter sentences. Visiting the jail two or three times a week, Deacon Charles conducts a Word and Communion Service on Sundays for nearly a dozen prisoners.

“Many will tell you they’re guilty,” he says. “Many are poor, involved in drugs and alcohol. If they aren’t on drugs, they’re trying to get money to buy drugs. But a lot of them are good guys—they just made a mistake. I talk with them, then pray with them or for them.

His experience with inmates demonstrates the inequity of the system: He finds the poor behind bars, but rarely the wealthy who hire the best lawyers. One inmate arrested on the same drug charge as a professional football player saw the athlete get probation, while he was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

“Some make a change in prison,” Deacon Charles adds thoughtfully. “Trouble is they go back to their old friends. They need new friends. They need a job. And we need a better distribution of wealth—otherwise, the young go for selling drugs for fast money.”

In another Glenmary area Father Bob Healy uses his time at a minimum security prison camp at Odum, Ga., to instruct inmates about the Catholic faith.

“I got into prison ministry because no one volunteered,” he reflects. But now, after three years working at Odum, he says, “I find the guys responding. They’re not just faking it. They’re showing up.”

For the past three years Father Bob has offered Mass and conducted a one-hour instruction every Tuesday night. Of the 14 who currently attend his sessions 10 are Catholic, and four are potential converts. Father Bob emphasizes the instructions for the Catholics, citing the common feeling among them that they would not be there if they had followed their faith.

Punishment for Inmate and Family

When the Catholic chaplain brings Communion to an inmate at a supermax prison in Southwest Virginia, he leaves the Eucharist on a chair, exits the room, then waits for the prisoner to enter and receive Holy Communion by himself. The rules deny any physical contact. Religious services appear an imposition on prison order.

Located in a rural area at the extreme end of the state, the prison routinely isolates inmates for up to 23 hours a day in cells measuring 6-by-12 feet. Although breathtaking vistas with sweeping mountain ranges surround the facility, inmates never glimpse the beauty—another calculated punishment (by sensory privation) in a system designed not for rehabilitation but punishment.The prison system offers economic opportunities to the rural South. Job-hungry areas which tend to be non-union vie for employment possibilities, and some states accept inmates from beyond their borders as a source of revenue.

The prisons in Glenmary’s Virginia missions house inmates from Wyoming, Connecticut and New Mexico. Families are so distant that the local public radio station in Whitesburg, Ky., which reaches six prisons and numerous county jails, hosted a Christmas call-in broadcast for families whose relatives were too distant to visit. The broadcast sending holiday greetings to inmates aired a week before Christmas and received 170 calls in three hours from 15 different states.

Christine Ramirez, the pastoral coordinator of Glenmary’s mission in Clintwood, Va., and Father Bob Rademacher, the sacramental minister, are working to establish an ecumenical hospitality house for families visiting prisoners in Southwest Virginia.

“Because of the location of the prisons, there are few motels nearby,” reports Christine. “And public transportation is nonexistent. Most of the families are poor and many times spouses bring the children.”

The hospitality house will mobilize a network of volunteers to facilitate the visits to support the family structure.

The Bishops Speak

In November 2000 the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter, Responsibility, Rehabilitation and Restoration, as a Catholic perspective on crime and criminal justice. The pastoral addresses the state of criminal justice in the United States today and offers directions for reform based on Church teaching. “How can we protect and rebuild communities, confront crime without vengeance, and defend life without taking life?” it asks. It sees crime not simply as a violation of law, but a threat to community. It rejects punishment for its own sake, emphasizing rather its constructive and redemptive purpose.

By affirming the principles of human dignity and community, the pastoral bucks the fashionable political trends in corrections. It dismisses “three strikes and you’re out” and “zero-tolerance” for drug offenders as too simplistic and a major cause for the rapid growth of the U.S. prison population. It rejects trying a juvenile as an adult, and it deplores the expanded use of isolation units. It calls for the sensible regulation of handguns and the abolition of the death penalty for the violence it inflicts on society. Ultimately the bishops seek a criminal justice system that tempers justice with mercy.

Looking at the major causes of crime, the bishops recognize the link with poverty for spawning gangs, violence and substance addiction. In their words: “Fighting poverty, educating children and supporting families are essential anti-crime strategies.” Drug-related crimes account for at least one-third of all convictions, but treatment programs in prisons have been diminishing.

Yet, a finding by the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs indicates that every dollar spent on treating substance abuse problems saves $7 through reductions in crime and hospitalization. The point: With more crime prevention, addiction treatment programs and poverty reduction, society will need fewer prisons.

A Final Reflection

Since 1994 Glenmary Father Tim Murphy, pastor of Glenmary’s mission in Aberdeen, Miss., has driven five hours round trip each month to the state penitentiary at Parchman, a prison that defines “hard time” with its pungent odors hanging in the stale dense air of the Mississippi Delta. (This is the prison John Grisham uses as the basis for his novel, The Chamber.)

A dedicated reader of The Catholic Worker, Father Tim saw a letter from an inmate at Parchman just as he moved to Mississippi. By asking for prayers and describing prison life, the letter seared a basic truth into Father Tim’s heart: prisoners are still human beings and many want to be forgiven.

“It just moved something in me to go,” he reflects. “I have seen over time a real desire in many men to know God.”

He describes his prison work as a ministry of fidelity and presence--a monthly commitment of time, going and listening to the forgotten. "Beyond that," he says, "it's up to God and the Holy Spirit.

Father Tim recognizes that Parchman contains extremely broken and wounded people who have hurt other people. "None of these men is outside God's love. The best our church can offer is forgiveness--it's real, it heals, it's possible. What we offer is forgiveness."