Wahidin (2004, 117) and Cohen & Taylor (1972, 86-93) have written eloquently about the ambiguities and deleterious effects of time in prison. Two chaplains spoke of ministry to long term prisoners in terms which portray the chaplain as one who tries to encourage purposivity when a sense of purpose to life seems to have been removed. Becky (newly appointed to a long stay prison) speaks of working with elderly sex offenders who are unlikely ever to be released:
How do you prepare somebody to live the rest of their life in prison? And what is the purpose of somebody’s life in this context? So the big theological question is a big psychological question that some of them are asking themselves and some haven’t got anywhere near asking because it is just too frightening to look at…… (we) are thinking about how we might encourage some of the men to think about their dying and preparation for death and what they would like to happen in those circumstances should it happen in prison. We just want to try and do it in a gentle way to encourage people to think about some of those really quite painful things. I mean, you know, the biggest fear for some people is that they will die in prison, but actually you have got to name it and identify it because it is a reality.
Becky, who encourages expression through poetry and visual art,
acknowledges that these are “big” questions for her as well as for the men (“How do you…What is..?”), that she needs a rationale for life and its
“purpose” when the props and trappings of life outside the prison have been removed. This entirely transcends questions of “what to do with them” and the more immediate, bounded aims of CBT courses, though Becky makes a link here between theology and psychology; as if recognising this, she tells me elsewhere that she would like to tutor on the Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP, a group based, cognitive programme). She positions the chaplain as one who can or should address such questions; it can be deduced that she sees no other agency attempting to do so. She identifies a problem in helping the men to face a painful probability (“You have got to name it and identify it….”), whilst trying to do it “in a gentle way”. Although she begins this passage with two questions, a subsequent phrase suggests at least part of a possible answer: “what they would like to happen in those circumstances”.
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This appears to restore to the prisoner a measure of decision and choice which was lost upon entry to prison, suggesting that the prison need not control death as it controls life. This feature is similar to Esther’s (and other chaplains’) accounts of conducting candle lightings and surrogate funerals. George (chaplain in a category A maximum security prison) explores the same issue of purposivity in the apparent absence of purpose:
Here we are conscious, particularly in chaplaincy, and maybe even wider than chaplaincy, of actually giving people a life inside without any, any thought of what is going to happen in 30, 35 years’ time. And some of our interventions, some of our courses that we offer are on those lines really. People say, “How does this fit into the strict criteria of the sentence plan?” Well it doesn’t, but it does add, we think, to the quality of prisoner life, their life inside prison…….. We give plants to people who are enhanced prisoners. It is a living thing in their cell that will not only give them pleasure and joy but also a sense of
responsibility…….and we find that our interaction with prisoners who have all sorts of questions about how they care for their plant and so forth, is a good illustration of something as totally unrelated to a sentence plan, totally unrelated to when are we going to be released, but is simply relating to the quality of prisoner life inside.
George has developed one practical means of engendering purposivity (“giving people a life inside”) which involves personal responsibility for the maintenance and nurturing of life and is capable of giving “pleasure and joy” in a bleak, tightly regulated environment. George depicts the ensuing
dialogue as being outside the corpus of prison plans and programmes, but it enriches an indefinitely and closely constrained life. He suggests that
awareness of such questions is not restricted to chaplaincy but it seems clear that, in a maximum security setting, only the chaplain is addressing them and that upon a necessarily restricted basis (“enhanced prisoners”). Like Becky, George – with many more years’ experience - is responding to questions about the purpose of a life spent in prison; neither of them mentions that many of their prisoners live with the daily knowledge of having taken a life. Becky’s and George’s circumstances and comments recall the situation of E wing prisoners in Cohen and Taylor’s study for whom no “reference to linear progress is possible.” (1974, 94)
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In my own ministry, I have listened to men attempting to make sense of their actions; one of them told me he lived with the knowledge every day and that “only those who have taken a life know what it is to live with that
knowledge.” The memory of such dialogues has made this an unexpectedly difficult section to compose.