Hope can be hard to find these days, and that’s why it so surprising to find hope shining so brightly in one of Wisconsin’s darkest prisons. Thursday evening the Wisconsin Inmate Education Association celebrated the beginning of the second year of operation at the Waupun Correctional Institution with a reception at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts in Brookfield.
What’s to celebrate about the fact that 41 men are currently enrolled in seminary classes in a maximum security prison? Would it surprise you to know that many of these men voluntarily left medium security institutions, where life is much easier, to spend four years in maximum security?
At the end of four years every graduate of this program will have a bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies from Trinity International University, a school based in Deerfield, Illinois, and they will return to their assigned institution to serve out the rest of their term (or stay at Waupun if that’s where they were assigned).
Each man has at least ten more years on their sentence. Some have a life sentence. They will become ministers behind bars, peer counselors, chaplains assistants. They will change the social environment of the prison, according to the promoters of the program. And according to officials at Waupun, they see it happening already.
A lot of stories were shared during the evening’s reception, some from a visit to Waupun that occurred earlier in the day. And some from states like Louisiana and Texas, where this program began and where research has provided numbers that support the anecdotes.
Anecdotally, from Waupun, the number of assaults reported in the prison began a steady decrease from the time the program began. From Angola, the notorious Louisiana prison where this program began, the current staffing level is 400 below what it was then. Â
“The whole culture of the prison changed,” said Burl Cain, former Angola warden. “These men are agents of change not only in the prison but also back in their communities when they get out of prison.”
Cain is now CEO of the Global Prison Seminaries Foundation, which reports that Wisconsin is currently one of 14 states which offers prison seminary programs. Two more states are expected to join the list in 2019.
Cain has many stories to tell about how this unique program began. But he’s most pleased about the research from Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion which spent three years analyzing the impact of the program at Angola.
“They found that ‘transformed inmates now look for ways to deliver support, and encourage prosocial behavior’ effecting the entire prison population. From 1996 to 2004, the rate of violence in Angola dropped by approximately 90 percent.”
Crime and race relations are two difficult social problems that have manifested themselves in an exploding prison population. Wisconsin has three dozen correctional institutions. (Men from 11 of them are enrolled in the Waupun seminary.) The political ability to solve these two problems and fix our prisons doesn’t seem to exist. In that environment, the prison seminary program sponsored by the Christian community appears to have the potential to change what the politicans cannot.
Prison officials seem eager to accept the privately funded seminary program with its obvious financial benefit of lowering their costs. Participation by inmates is completely voluntary and open to all prisoners.
Outside of the prison there are also benefits, as the families of inmates are also seeing changes. Crime and violence are being reduced, the value of fatherhood is being raised, recidivism is reduced, and addictions are being overcome.
The impact on the faith communities that support the program is also important. “When we put people in prison we want to forget about them but God doesn’t forget them,” said Kristi Miller, COO of the Global Prison Seminaries Foundation. “We do this because we understand there’s no life that’s beyond the power of Jesus.”
Jay Simala, Director of REACH Academic Adult Programs at Trinity International University, noted that Trinity is typical of many colleges, with lots of exciting programs. “But this is the most exciting story we have.”
As the number of students grows, the number of prisons in the program grow, and the number of states in program grow, the impact will not only be on prisons but in cities across the country. Hope is shining brightly in the prisons right now.
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More on this national trend in a story from Religion News Service.
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