This week people from more than 100 different countries across the globe are gathering in Toronto, Canada, for Prison Fellowship International’s World Convocation. DAVID ADAMS speaks to Canadian Ron Nikkel, the organisation’s president and chief executive, about their work in the world’s prisons…
This week people from more than 100 different countries across the globe are gathering in Toronto, Canada, for Prison Fellowship International’s World Convocation. Canadian Ron Nikkel, the organisation’s president and chief executive, talks about their work in the world’s prisons…
What is Prison Fellowship International’s World Convocation all about?
“It is the quadrennial gathering of the world’s largest group of people involved in prison and justice related ministry. It brings together nearly 1000 leaders from over 130 countries for training, sharing experiences, encouragement and celebration of what God is doing in the midst of human failure and confinement. It focuses on transformed lives, reconciled relationships and restored families and communities.”
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BRINGING HOPE: Ron NIkkel visits a young girl and her brother who were living in prison with their mother in a Bolivian prison since they had no where else to live. PF Bolivia has a shelter program that helps children like her. You can see more about the plight of children living in prison with their incarcerated parents and what PF Bolivia is doing to help them at www.pfi.org/media-and-news/films/pf-bolivia-children-in-prison “Volunteers are the hands and feet of Jesus in the prisons of the world. They express the love and grace of Jesus among prisoners who are marginalised, judged, and cut off from society because of wrongdoing and injustice.” |
PFI has more than 50,000 volunteers working in some 119 countries. What is the role of volunteers generally? “Volunteers are the hands and feet of Jesus in the prisons of the world. They express the love and grace of Jesus among prisoners who are marginalised, judged, and cut off from society because of wrongdoing and injustice. Volunteers build friendships with prison inmates through sports, cultural activities, education, literacy, and a variety of other creative programs. The point of the programs is to brighten up the lives of people in confinement, to provide a meaningful activity to people who have time on their hands and often idle – but most importantly offer an opportunity for caring friendships that extend encouragement, counsel, hope, and help to needy people. It is through these relationships that the good news of God’s love and grace and mercy is demonstrated and communicated. Some of the “normal” programs that PF provides, including prison visits, skill training, The Sycamore Tree Project (a victim/offender awareness project), Angel Tree, faith-based units, children’s daycare centres for children living in prisons with their parents…Bible study and spiritual discussion groups, chapel services, family and relationship seminars, and even entrepreneurship training.”
How does the context make their work challenging? Can you describe some of the contexts in which they are working?
“The context of Prison Fellowship’s work varies greatly from country to country. Many prisons in Africa, for example, have such dismal conditions – severe overcrowding, lack of food and water, poor ventilation, rampant disease – that volunteers must often focus simply on the prisoners’ survival, bringing them food, digging water bore holes, providing mobile clinics (and so on). Ministries in more developed countries can offer programs that work to prevent recidivism and help prisoners with job skills, education and spiritual growth, since the prisoners physical health is usually taken care of. In North America and Europe security is often the over riding concern of prison officials and so access to prisoners by volunteers is often severely restricted. The tragedy of prisons is often not that they isolate the prisoners but that they keep the community out – keep out normalising influence of people who share positive values and attitudes.”
Is the need for this ministry growing? Why do you think that is or isn’t the case?
“Yes, the need for this ministry continues to be great and grow as the size of prison populations grow in so many countries. Prisons are not effective and actually tend to create more crime and recidivism than they prevent. PF ministries help turn this trend around by breaking the cycle of crime.”
So prisons are not an effective way of deterring criminal behaviour and restoring offenders to a productive position in society?
“(P)risons are a monumental failure in the rehabilitation of offenders. While prisons do prevent offenders from committing further offences whilst they are locked up the reality is that most offenders return to the community. In what condition do they return to society. The reality is that most released offenders will become repeat offenders because of a variety of issues such as prisons being a ‘university’ for crime, and the fact that the longer a person is segregated from society the more difficult it becomes for them to return to society reconnect with their families, find productive employment, and become responsible citizens. Prisons are the most illogical of all human institutions. You cannot make a ‘bad’ person ‘good’ by locking a person up into an environment where all of the persons are there for bad behaviour. When the dominant influence is criminal the results will be criminal.”
Broadly speaking, do you think governments give enough support to rehabilitation programs? Do you believe there should be a greater focus on putting money into restorative justice programs?
“Generally governments are more concerned about security than about rehabilitation. Very little is done for example to provide drug addiction treatment to persons who are imprisoned for criminal behaviour related to their addiction or to support their addiction. At PFI we believe in the effectiveness of programming designed to affect a prisoners attitudes, values, and social as well as emotional needs. Crime is not just a behaviour it is rooted in the values and in the ‘heart’ of the offender. Even restorative justice programs such as alternatives to imprisonment will be ineffective if there is no values change in the person. To change an offender the person must be loved and must know that he or she is loved. That is why the participation of the community particularly the Christian community is vitally and strategically important to solving the problem of offending and repeat offending among prison inmates.”
“The problem in the Western world is perhaps far worse than in poor countries where prison conditions are horrific. The growing issue in many Western countries is the pervasive sense of cynicism and hopelessness – the internal anguish and sense of futility that is a symptom of the erosion of moral and social values in society.” |
When many Christians think of the work of Prison Fellowship International, they tend to think of volunteers working in over-flowing prisons in some of the world’s poorest countries. But is the need for PFI’s ministry just as great in the Western world?
“Absolutely…(S)imply placing offenders together in a separate environment for an extended period of time is not an effective way to deal with crime, it is in fact illogical as I have said. The problem in the Western world is perhaps far worse than in poor countries where prison conditions are horrific. The growing issue in many Western countries is the pervasive sense of cynicism and hopelessness – the internal anguish and sense of futility that is a symptom of the erosion of moral and social values in society.”
What do you see as the greatest challenge for PFI at the moment?
“The need for volunteers and churches to express the radical love of Jesus in a broken world – among offenders, ex-offenders, their families – through practical caring friendship and service. The church needs to wake up and understand that justice is not accomplished in punishing the offender but that justice is accomplished when offenders take responsibility for their actions and when the loss and hurt and damage done by crime is healed through reconciliation and restoration.”
And in the future?
“More of the same to the point where the caring Christian community becomes the primary player as an agent for transformation, reconciliation, and restoration in response to crime and injustice in society.”
I understand you’ve visited more than 1000 prisons in more than 100 countries around the world since you started working with PFI 30 years ago. Can you tell us about a story (involving the work of PFI) which really touched you recently?
“I recently sat down beside a prisoner who was doing his 20th stint in prison. A repeat offender with a very serious drug problem. He was playing a battered guitar and singing an off-key Gospel song. ‘You must love Jesus,’ I said to him. ‘Are you a believer?’ I asked when he just nodded silently. After sitting with him for awhile he said, ‘Yeah, I do OK in here. I love to sing, I love the Bible and I pray. But when I get out I always fall – do you think God still loves me even when I fall?’ His question choked me up. How will this young man ever know the unconditional love of God if there is no one there to walk with him and pick him up when he falls and to embrace him in the midst of failure? His is the question or the anguish that so many men and women in prison feel. How can I ever be loveable and useful and worthwhile to God if everything and everyone around me tells me I am no good at all?”
What would you ask Christians around the world to be praying for with regard to the work of PFI?
Pray for the Lord to raise up workers, friends to go into the prisons of the world to make a difference for good. Pray for the Lord to send labourers into the harvest!
