Prayer Request.

I'll be in bed myself in a minute, but I'd like to ask that some of you would consider uploading an instant message, or indeed praying, for Mike. I can't say any more, but God knows the details. Thank you.

To free or not to free...

WARNING, by Jenny Joseph, 1961.

WHEN I AM AN OLD WOMAN I SHALL WEAR PURPLE
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

That's a very well known poem, and it's a good 'un. It just summarises so beautifully the lovely "don't care any more" thing that we start to enjoy as we get older. Now I'm in my forties (I know it's hard to believe from my Shy-Anne picture) I am already finding I don't care a tenth as much as I used to what people think of me, though I still care. The growing confidence, which I suppose is what it is, is such a liberation.

Yesterday I watched the prisoners being "libbed" (liberated) and embracing their waiting relatives (please God help them stay on the straight and narrow and not be back) and it is a moving sight, actually. Liberation, of any kind, is amazing. The liberation that a hip replacement or other operation can bring, the liberation of escape from a violent relationship, the liberation of leaving a job you hate, the liberation from worrying about what other people think, and - one of my interests as a Christian - the liberation from guilt. Jesus said he came to set people free and that if he sets us free we'll be free indeed. It's so sad that people don't seek freedom when they can. Freedom is surely worth the seeking. (Unless you're a prisoner, in which case absconding or escaping's not such a good idea as waiting till your're libbed legally!)

William Wallace: Aye, fight and you may die, run, and you'll live... at least for a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!
[crowd cheers]

Jail Birds (Bird=female in Scottish slang)

This picture is Elizabeth Fry visiting a woman prisoner.

Now here's an interesting quote: "The system is gendered - far too few women are held accountable and the proportion of female to male prisoners is too low. From general social attitudes, to police, to COPFS, to judges, women are infantalised and pathologised but not held criminally accountable. Think of the children who really should be protected!" So says the first comment here.

This really has made me think. I have always bought into the widespread belief that too many of the women sent to jail are poor souls who shouldn't be there, victims themselves really, and so on. This is the first time I've thought about the possibility that perhaps as this commenter says, "women are infantalised and pathologised but not held criminally accountable". Mmmmm. I'm going to think more about this. I have visited a women's prison in the past but today I was visiting a men's jail which has about 1,500 prisoners in it (more than it is designed for). The chaplain there led me through the area where the families who were in for the visiting time were congregating. He was saying that quite often the women cause fights and arguments and are difficult for the staff to deal with. I've often heard officers say that working at the female prison is harder in many ways than working with male prisoners.
I guess ladettes who want, for example, to drink like lads at weekends and get into brawls in the street need to be treated fairly. And fairly works two ways...

But aren't chaplains supposed to be nice? Not seeking to get more folk locked up! Well chaplains are supposed to speak up for what seems to them morally right as best they can. Our governors usually tell us they want us to be knocking on their door if we see unjust or unethical practices in their jails. If I do, on reflection, conclude that what this commenter said is true, then maybe I'll end up with the view that more rather than fewer women should be locked up, but that'll be ethical and moral if it's because I'm standing against infantalising and pathologising women.

Twisted thinking

Prisoners' thinking can be very twisted.

Recently I was talking to a prisoner who was arguing that if he had his way all "junkies" would be given an injection in the neck and put down. This man is an alcoholic. In my usual diplomatic way (!) I pointed out that alcoholism was an addiction too. He wasn't pleased and said that no, alcholism is a disease. I was unable to persuade him that there were any similarities between the addictions.

But jail's like that. There is a pecking order of crime. In a jail containing only sex offenders, the rapists (i.e. rapes of adult victims) see themselves better than the paedophiles. In other jails, prisoners classify themselves as better than some other class of offence. Prisoners often lie to one another about the nature of their offence to make it more "acceptable". Incidentally, murder, which we might (hopefully DO) see as very bad, isn't looked down on so much in jail whereas other offences, like mugging an old lady, are seen as beyond the pale.

I have found this very interesting, and yet I have also found myself wondering if perhaps ALL human beings do exactly this. According to our own various personal measuring schemes we rate others as above or below us. A dear and very ancient relative of mine openly judges people on how good their speech is (she once studied elocution herself).

I heard a prison officer recently refer to all the prisoners collectively and dismissively as "scrotes" - I think he validates himself, in a way, by finding a group of people he feels superior to.

Do I do it? I hope not, but I fear I do.

Hello Dad I'm In Jail

Hello Dad I'm In Jail by Was Not Was is just great. Watch it if you've never seen it. Weird, was not was it?!

I'm struck by the line, "I like it here". It was probably meant sarcastically but the truth is some of our guys do like jail better than life outside. If you've been in jail for years, being outside is seriously scary and even crossing the road or catching a bus is pretty daunting. Above all, in jail, everyone else is in the same boat as you and there's a sort of "fellowship" there. Yesterday I was talking to an officer about a certain prisoner and we were agreeing it's kind of a shame that when his sentence is over he couldn't just be given a job and allowed to stay! He gets on fine in jail but makes a pig's ear of life outside.

20 years ago I worked as a visiting officer for the Dept of Social Security at the time when under "Care in The Community" institutionalised adults with learning difficulties were being put out of their institutions into flats in the big (and in places wild) council housing estate. Good news for those on the look out for vulnerable people to relieve of their benefit. Some of them perhaps should never have been in an institution but, given that they had been, the transition was tough. Many had the mental age of children and just because they had been taught to shop and cook and clean didn't mean they were going to be happy living by themselves.

Before that I worked in a night shelter/ day centre for single homeless men. One fellow, D, had done really well and was drug free. Aged 34 he was allocated a flat and I was sent off to The Barras in Glasgow to help him spend his DSS grant of £500 (this was before loans came in) on everything he needed for his flat. I said, "Right you definitely need a cooker". "Oh no", says he, "I'll just light a fire". "D, you can't do that, you're on the twelfth floor of a multi-storey block. You must have a cooker". "Okay, but can I light the fire on top of the cooker?" He had lived in children's home followed by List D school (as it was then called) followed by Young Offenders Institution followed by jail followed by the Night Shelter. He was definitely institutionalised. And yet D actually did really well and got on fine, even with his cooker!

Lots of guys (and women) do get on fine, even if they've been institutionalised for a long time but an awful lot don't. I know prisons are overcrowded as it is, but sometimes I just think, you know, can't we just keep this guy and give him a job and a home? I'm not really being serious. Obviously we can't. But, expensive as it is to keep folk in jail, how much more costly in every way not just financial, to have them out wreaking havoc on themselves and others?

Just recently, within days of each other I've attended two very interesting training sessions in the jails. The first was about how to watch out for being conditioned and manipulated by prisoners. (It is undoubtedly the case that many a prisoner would sell his granny, and lie his head off, to achieve his own ends, and all staff are fair game). The second was about how to manage prisoners who are in a frame of mind where they are tempted to self-harm or attempt suicide, with some consideration of the types of prisoner and the types of circumstances that can lead to such a state of affairs (anyone, any time would be a slight exaggeration, but not much).

It's interesting that in a way these two courses highlighted almost opposing attitudes which prison staff must hold in tension at all times. First of all we need to be suspicious and never to forget that we are staff and they are prisoners and they may be manipulating us (of course staff may also be manipulated by staff, prisoners by staff, and prisoners by prisoners but let's keep this simple). But secondly, and at the same time, we need to be caring, respectful and observant, picking up on signals about how the prisoner is feeling.

A challenge? Indeed.

Life's like that, though, isn't it? People that don't hold opposing things in tension and swing to one extreme position are not usually right to do so, in my opinion. The older I get the more I haunt the middle ground. When I was a young hothead divinity student I had such ready opinions and was way too judgemental. Now I feel like some kind of chameleon. Whoever's company I'm in, I'm thinking about stuff from their angle, if I'm able. I've recently started to read and enjoy blogs by police, ambulance crew and others who're so often dealing with the same section of society I run into every day at work. When I'm reading their blog I'm totally into their perspective. If I were reading a victim's story, or was with a victim I'd be right into their story. But if I'm talking to a perpetrator, then notwithstanding I'm on the lookout for whether he's trying to manipulate me, I'm standing with him too. Not liking what he's done. Not offering mindless support of the, "Yeh, yeh, yeh, poor you" variety, but nonetheless seeing, when I can, how he got to where he got to, and seeing, when I can, how he might make the rest of his life better than the bit so far.

Sometimes I worry about this chameleon brain thing that's befallen me (I didn't do it on purpose) but lo and behold I'm in kinda good company. Paul, one of the most important leaders of the early church said this: "I am a free man, nobody's slave (clearly he'd done the SPS course about not being manipulated) ; but I make myself everybody's slave in order to win as many people as possible. While working with the Jews, I live like a Jew in order to win them.... when working with Gentiles, I live like a Gentile... in order to win Gentiles.... Among the weak in faith I become weak like one of them, in order to win them. So I become all things to all men, that may save some of them by whatever means are possible".

Polis!

A prison officer at work told me that one day when she was supervising the visiting, a wee 2-year old who was in visiting his dad came up to her, pointed at her white shirt with black epaulettes and said, "Polis" (Scottish for police). She said, "No, my name's ....., what's your name?" The wee fellow couldn't yet say his own name, but already he could say, "Polis". She thought, "there goes one of our future customers". Hopefully he won't be, but I know what she means. Sometimes you feel some kids haven't a chance, don't you?

A prisoner I've got to know well, who claims to be a Christian, will be "libbed" (liberated, released) this year, and although I've spent a lot of time with him, I've yet to be persuaded that he has the faintest idea how to live honestly and within the law. The more I learn of his background and the number of his relatives in jail, and so on, the more I think that he actually doesn't know how to live honestly. And yet, he's never been in jail before, he's hated it and he's determined never to be back. He wants to provide for his family. He plans to work. He plans to go to church. But I think he's like a grown up version of that wee 2-year old and won't succeed unless he can somehow unlearn all he learned as he grew up. I am really really really thankful for my upbringing, in which I learned right from wrong, and I worry for this guy's wee ones, that he'll be equipped to teach them right from wrong.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Him Indoors celebrated a significant birthday this weekend (he's catching up with me) and, not wanting a party, chose instead to have those who wanted to join us for a five mile walk at the Hermitage, Dunkeld, on Saturday. It wasn't warm, but was fine if you kept moving, and it was sunny, and we had a lovely time. The photo of the "empty tomb" I posted for Easter Day yesterday is in fact the hermit's cave that you pass on the walk. Apparently there was never a real hermit in it. The Duke of Atholl allegedly paid a servant to pretend to be a hermit whenever he was taking his guests out for a walk. Shocking, eh? If you look closely at the photo you can see our kids' Auntie P. Here's the crew who assembled to help us mark the occasion.



And, finally, yesterday I was allowed to take 3 prisoners from the jail to our church for the Easter Day service where, at the coffee time afterwards, one of our members who is in his day job a Chief Inspector in the police (but at church is a Sunday School teacher and family man) gave them a creme egg each (left over from the ones that were given out to the kids). That's one of the things I like about church - it brings together wonderfully random combinations of people. I love the fact that even in just our church I have friends of all ages and from all types of background, in all levels of maturity in the Christian faith, and with problems and hang-ups and obstacles, just as I have, though not necessarily the same ones. Church is a great leveller. The guys enjoyed the service and indeed it was a great service yesterday and the church was bursting at the seams. The songs were good ones anyway but the big crowd made them sound even better.

The Passion of the Christ

Today I at long last screwed up courage to watch Mel Gibson's "The Passion of The Christ". I don't do Certificate 18 films at the best of times, being more of a Pride and Prejudice gal, and this is particularly gory. I think the critic Mark Kermode, who must have seen many a film in his day, said it was the most violent film he'd ever seen.

But I wanted to show it to the prisoners, and so I sat with six and a half men (well seven to start with then one left before the end!) and watched it with them this afternoon. The bits with "the mum" (Mary) got to us all and I confess I didn't physically watch every second of the film. I had to stare at the floor or the wall several times, and for longish periods, particularly during the scene where Jesus is whipped mercilessly. But I did my best. I kept thinking, "if he went through all that, and I have benefitted so spectacularly, the least I can do is give up two hours to watch this".

If you're the praying kind, please pray for the guys who watched it, some of whom I know and some I don't, that it won't be just another violent film, but that they'll understand. It was Good Friday 1979 when I first began to "get it" about what the cross was all about. I pray they'll all "get it" too.

Oh look who it is!

I took the kids to the cinema yesterday (to see Alvin and the Chipmunks if you want to know). We walked there and then we got the bus home.

As I was paying for one adult and four children and watching all the tickets come shooting out like a ticker tape parade, I heard "Hello, Anne!" behind me. I turned round and there was a fairly recently liberated life sentence prisoner I had come to know well!

A couple of weeks after liberation this man had phoned me at work to say he was missing jail. And yesterday he said that, over the first six weeks or so, he'd experienced a few panic attacks. He has found being out of jail very difficult. This is someone for whom prison is no punishment really - he is "jail-wide", which means he is so experienced in prison life he knows all the dodges and tricks. He knows how to get by in jail. He is looked up to by younger or more inexperienced inmates who come to him for advice. In jail, he IS someone, in a sense. Out of jail, he's - well, he probably feels he's a nobody. And the world has moved on, and he struggles. Alcohol's a big issue for him in the community whereas in jail he's not surrounded by the stuff.

If you're the praying kind, please pray for him. He used to come regularly to the services in jail but I wasn't always sure why! I would hate for him to resort to crime specifically in order to get back to jail where he feels comfortable. He lives within walking distance of our church and has promised many times to come "some time".

And pray for youngsters everywhere who're on the path to where that man is today. He's not particularly young - I believe he's a grandfather - but there are youngsters today in secure units who will get out briefly, get into more trouble, be re-arrested, will graduate to Young Offenders Institution, will get out briefly, get into more trouble, be re-arrested, go to Big Men's Prison, and become as institutionalised as my friend whom I've described. It's not right.

I AM a fellow prisoner, actually!

“The best way to judge a society is how it treats its prisoners”, said Winston Churchill.
“The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons”, said Dostoevsky.
The Bible gives us a pretty good basis for treating prisoners well even if their crime, their attitude and their behaviour offend us. We've to remember prisoners as if we were their fellow inmates but why?

Here's an EXCELLENT reason! We ARE their fellow prisoners!

Romans 7:21b-23 says: "When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members." What was that? I'm a prisoner too? Well, yeah, I suppose I am. And if I am it's certainly easier to remember those in prison as if I were their fellow prisoner. Too right I am. "For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing" (Romans 7:18b,19).

I guess I'm just lucky that the things that tempt me aren't illegal so my sins are not crimes. But I'm in prison just the same, like good old Paul before me.

Prison Overcrowding

Open Prisons

The Sun and various other newspapers seem to hate the Scottish Prison Service's open estate, referring for example to one of them, HMP Castle Huntly, as a "bouncy castle" and a "country club" amongst other things.

What is the "open estate"? It is the name given to two Scottish prisons which are open in the simple and obvious sense that they have no big fence and no walls.

They are controversial, there is no doubt, and particularly in the last week or so when we have heard the shocking news that a prisoner from the Open Estate who was allowed out failed to return, went on the run, and committed a very serious violent crime. My thoughts and prayers have mostly been with the unfortunate victim.

There have been a number of "absconds" from the Open Estate in my time but this is the most serious and alarming case by far. It has sparked off (yet) another round of calls for the end of open prisons.

However, I really hope that doesn't happen. And I feel sad for the many prisoners currently at the Open Estate who are working extremely hard, holding down work placements (sometimes the first time in their adult lives they have worked at all), or undertaking education, or winning a long-standing battle with addiction, or making plans for the future and committing themselves afresh to their partners and children. Certainly not all of them will succeed in living up to their good intentions, but plenty will, and they really deserve our respect for the distance they have travelled, often guys who have had an awful start in life.

Since starting work in the prison service I've developed a sudden interest in a genre of tv I would never have looked at before: "America's most violent jail"-type programs have me glued to the seat! Are there a lot more of these programs at the moment or did I really never notice them before? Even "Ross Kemp on Gangs" has me totally intrigued. This week there was another similar documentary on gangs in Glasgow and London that had me nearly in tears.

The Louis Theroux program recently on an American jail showed inmates who had sentences of over 500 years. Our tabloids would love most criminals to be locked up and the key thrown away. But we don't do that. Our prisoners are going to get out eventually. So, given that that's the case do we want them prepared for release or not? Do we want to release totally institutionalised people who haven't seen anything of the outside world for years, or do we want to re-integrate them in a staged way? I vote for the latter.

Now, some prisoners behave so badly in closed jails that they are not allowed to progress to open conditions, and of course eventually they are released anyway, but I don't think that negates the good that can be done for those who are able to make the progression and benefit from it. Also, the carrot of getting to the Open Estate with its Home Leave Scheme is an incentive to tow the line in closed jail.

I think of a man at the Open Estate whose drug history in the past was totally chaotic, who is into his forties and has spent most of his adult life in jail. Now? He's clean. He's established good relationships with his family (I think for the first time) and he's had a couple of home leaves. The first time he had one, he couldn't cope, totally panicked and took a non-prescribed drug (valium) to calm himself down. He came back to jail, failed a drug test, owned up, got counselling, and has since accomplished a couple of home leaves drug free and feels a whole new self-confidence. His story is not untypical. I am as confident as I could be that he will do well on release.

I could tell you lots of stories of success, and quite a number of failures too. But we're in the business of risk. And I get tired of the bad press. And so do the prisoners. And their families.

Do you know what I wish made the news on the average day? "Today across the Open Estate nearly 500 prisoners stayed in jail even though there is no big wall or big fence". But that kind of news doesn't sell papers.

Incidentally, if you read this in time, watch BBC1 at 12.30 tomorrow (Sunday) lunchtime - Castle Huntly is on Politics Today!

Ax

Porridge!

Today I had a coffee with the Human Resources Manager at the prison, at the end of which he said, "Anne, did you know there's really only one manual you actually need to read cover to cover to work for the SPS?"

"No", I said, wondering which manual would be the one that was so indispensible. Then he said, "I've got a copy here. I'll lend you my copy" and produced a three-stories-in-one book of the BBC tv series Porridge!!!

And he's right, actually. It tells you everything you need to know to work in jail (in the UK anyway). I've always loved Porridge (the series - not porridge the cereal which I think is disgusting along with all cereals which I maintain are of the devil!)... But I never dreamt when I watched it as a kid I'd one day have an inside perspective - thankfully a staff rather than an inmate perspective. And the funny thing is there are almost as many laughs in jail as the series would suggest. Lots of banter amidst lots of angst. And the endless "game" of officers and prisoners (screws and cons) trying endlessly to outwith each other with "measures" verses "dodges"! God gave us a sense of humour partly because He is nice, partly because He's got one Himself, and partly, I'm sure, because it is such a help when we're in horrible places like jail. Incidentally I've worked in a night shelter and a hospice-type day centre in the past too - and in the DSS - and it was the same there - jokes and banter interspersed with tears and trials.

Have you ever had one of these slinky toys that this happened to? I don't think they're fixable. I've tried! Some people's lives are in such a tangled mess that humanly speaking they are unfixable. Read on!

Almost all the services I have conducted over the past six months have been in the two prisons of I am now the chaplain. And it may or may not surprise you to learn that services in prison are not exactly like services in church. For one thing we don’t get huge numbers and for another people don’t sit beautifully quietly. But I really like services in prison and they’ve made me see bits of the Bible in a new light. For example recently we were looking at Ephesians 4, which for those of you like me who don’t know the Bible off by heart is a passage (written, incidentally, from prison) which says: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”. (Ephesians 4:22-24)

That’s actually an amazing piece of God’s message – here it is in a slightly different version: “Since, then, we don’t have the excuse of ignorance, everything – and I do mean everything – connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life – a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you”.

And then, since Paul likes the direct approach, he goes on to spell it all out: “No more lying then! … If you become angry, don’t let your anger lead you into sin, and don’t stay angry all day. Don’t give the Devil a chance. The man who used to rob must stop robbing and start working, in order to earn an honest living for himself and to be able to help the poor. Do not use harmful words…. Get rid of all bitterness, passion, and anger. No more shouting or insults, no more hateful feelings of any sort…. Do not get drunk with wine, which will only ruin you” – and so on.

I’ve read these words many times, and heard them read in church, but what an amazing experience to read them in prison. If you become angry, don’t let your anger lead you into sin – lots of your audience are in a prison service are in for violent assault or murder which was because they got angry and let their anger lead them into sin. The man who used to rob must stop robbing and start working, in order to earn an honest living for himself and to be able to help the poor. That’s a challenge for many who’re in for robbery or fraud. Do not get drunk with wine, which will only ruin you – lots of them are in for offences committed while drunk. Their lives are in a mess. And so, reading a passage like that in prison really makes it come alive – not because the rest of us aren’t sinners too but because the life change that’s demanded of these guys if they are to be Christians is so big, compared to someone who’s been brought up in the church and really just needs to kind of confirm for themselves that they believe what their parents and church has taught them all these years.

At the last but one service I did, a prisoner was just amazed by this passage and felt as if it was all written about him. He’s about my age now and he’s fed up with his life as he’s lived it up until now. He’s thrilled by this idea that you can put off your old self and put on a new self, and yet I can see that a bit of him doubts that such a thing is really possible. He yearns for it but he doesn’t just fully believe that it’s really possible. He wants this to be true for him but it seems impossible that it could happen.

Perhaps some of you might adopt that prisoner and pray for him – you don’t need his name because God’s got a note of it already – but pray that he will indeed be able to put off his old life of addiction and crime and put on this new life that he can see so clearly would help not just him but his wife and young family.

Why am I mentioning all this at the start of advent, when people read the Bible reading about Mary and the angel? Well, mainly because of what he said about wondering whether the change Ephesians 4 talks about and which he yearns for is in fact actually impossible because the answer’s in this bit of the Christmas story - it is that one line in the angel’s message to Mary, “For nothing is impossible with God”.

That's the key to it all really... lots and lots and lots of things are impossible for us but NOTHING is impossible with God. Even the apparently far-fetched and ridiculous, like the virgin birth. God made the rules and laws of nature so he can change them as he wishes. He can also untangle the tangled mess of a person's life, so they no longer need be sick and tired of being sick and tired of who they are but can become a new person. Impossible? NOTHING is impossible with God.