HIGH SPIRITS: A Sugar Land Easter
Aitken, Jonathan
HIGH SPIRITS JONATHAN AITKEN A Sugar Land Easter S PENDING EASTER IN TEXAS prisons was a memorable experience. It included prayers on Death Row; some heartrending encounters in three women's...
...So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart...
...The recipients also get a Gospel message and the offer of a holiday at a Christian summer camp...
...Seven years after George W. Bush opened the first IFI unit, it is now showing a repeat offending rate of just 8 percent among its released inmates...
...This impressive figure, confirmed by independent studies, is catching the attention of politicians and others interested in criminal reform...
...He knows that nobody is beyond the reach of Christ's redeeming love...
...But those dismal repeat offender statistics suggest that most of the responses to his call for a changed life will only be temporary...
...Since so much criminality begins at home Colson is probably right to describe the Angel Tree camping scheme as "fighting crime at its roots by reaching kids with the Gospel...
...His simple powerful prayer is for each of these ladies facing possible execution to be granted God's mercy, peace, and grace...
...So a pessimist would say that this is a jail full of incorrigible recidivists most of whom will be back behind bars within two or three years of their release...
...So the hard question that needs to be asked is: Can there be any better way than judicial toughness and long sentences for getting prisoners to break out of their depressing life cycles of crime, imprisonment, reoffending, and re-imprisonment...
...DeLay spoke with enthusiasm about the IFI regime...
...He makes no easy promises...
...Dawn was breaking in the hill country of Central Texas as Colson and his team of Prison Fellowship volunteers passed through the heavily fortified gates and barbed wire perimeter fencing of Mountain View State Penitentiary near Gatesville...
...The IFI regime is based on Restorative Justice principles aimed at bringing about behavioral, moral, and spiritual change in the lives of inmates doing the course...
...NI Jonathan Aitken, a former British MP and cabinet minister, is the author of seven books, including Nixon: A Life...
...According to the now President Bush's director of faith-based and community initiatives office at the White House, Jim Towey: "The president's interest in criminal justice reform dates back to his time as governor of Texas when he became worried about the enormous expenditures of up to $80,000 a year on prisoners most of whom were back behind barswithin two or three years...
...But having seen his own reputation transformed, how goes Colson's greater battle to transform the lives of prisoners, the criminal justice system, and society as a whole...
...Ladies, I want you to live for the risen Christ," he tells his rapt audience, "I know it's not easy...
...I've been in many prisons and this one is quite different," he told the Spectator...
...After leaving death row, Colson preaches the Gospel in the main body of the prison, where he JONATHAN AITKEN speaks to about 350 women dressed in their all-white prison uniforms...
...C OLSON GOT THE IDEA of IFI from visiting a Christian-run prison in Brazil, known as APAC, which produced very low rates of reoffending...
...What have I done for you...
...It's clean, there are no unpleasant smells, you get lots of smiles from inmates, and the positive feel of this place is well reflected in those remarkably low repeat offending statistics...
...My host was Charles W. Colson, once the vilified hatchet man of Watergate, now the respected chairman and founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries...
...At the end of it I came away in full agreement with a remark my host made in his sermons at all these prisons: "There is nowhere I would rather be on Easter Day than here in these tombs of modern society...
...Since so much criminality begins at home, Colson is probably right to describe the Angel Tree camping scheme as "fi ting crime at its roots...
...His proposal for replicating the APAC formula in a Texas jail was imaginatively supported in 1997 by then Gov...
...The repeat offending figures are what count with budget holders from the White House to Congress to state legislatures...
...Because if you do give it up and live for the one who died for our sins, then out of gratitude to him you will want to stay faithful to him and change the whole direction of your lives to honor him...
...It houses 330 prisoners on a regime known as Innerchange Freedom Initiative, or IFI...
...The repeat offending rate is close to the national average of 69 percent...
...asks Colson with surprise...
...In terms of prisoner rehabilitation IFI Sugar Land is America's most successful penal institution...
...If the fervor of the Amens and Hallelujahs coming out of the Mountain View prison chapel are any indication, Colson's seeds appear to be falling on good ground...
...This simple program has been the biggest single invasion of the Gospel into the inner cities...
...His first stop at Mountain View is on death row, where he meets and prays with four women...
...I'm talking about those wonderful Christmas presents your Angel Tree organization gives every year to my three kids," she explains...
...In spirit and appearance this old-fashioned prison symbolizes the tough school of Retributive Justice which the voters and the judges of Texas like to see enforced...
...Mountain View is a high security women's prison with some 600 inmates, most of them serving medium to long sentences (often at mandatory terms) for crimes that 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2004 range from fraud to drug dealing...
...That's why he backed Charles Colson's IFI scheme...
...some heartrending encounters in three women's jails...
...an hour earlier than in other Texas jails) and teaches life-changing skills that include repentance, restoration to victims, devotional sessions, prayer, and Bible reading...
...JUNE 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 49...
...Yet for Colson the argument is a deeper one of Restorative Justice versus Retributive Justice or even of God versus Mammon...
...So this tale of two prisons sends its own signals: 69 percent repeat offenders at Mountain View vs...
...That's been my only way of doing something for them at Christmas time to show them I love them...
...On Easter Sunday 2004 in Texas prisons it was encouraging to believe that God might be winning...
...Originally mocked by the liberal media as "a bible boot camp," the IFI prison at Sugar Land is now taken seriously as a pathfinding innovator in the fight against crime and recidivism...
...Colson believes that he does have an answer to this question and that it is on display at the next stop on his Easter Sunday itinerary This is the Carol Vance Unit at Sugar Land Prison near Houston...
...He has spent the last 27 Easters in jails across the world bringing the Gospel to "the least of these my brethren" (Matthew 25:40...
...8 percent at IFI Sugar Land...
...Colson, however, is an optimist when it comes to preaching the gospel of salvation...
...Among Colson's guests at IFI Sugar Land on Easter Sunday was Rep...
...This and his year-round record of Christian services to prisoners is an effective answer to the widespread cynicism that greeted his Born Again conversion and eponymous bestseller some 30 years ago...
...One of the death row women thanks Colson for all he has done for her...
...Says Towey: "The president came to see that nothing would change unless the moral and spiritual poverty of such men was addressed...
...I know the temptations, the drugs, the deals, the homosexual stuff, but I want you to turn your back on all that...
...Tom DeLay, majority leader in the House of Representatives...
...Colson swings his arm in a body-turning circle and gazes up at the cross on the chapel altar...
...and a hopeful visit to the most successful rehabilitative penal institution in America...
...One way of answering these questions is to follow Colson, as I did on Easter Day, on his journey through two very different j ails...
...An IFI prisoner's day starts at 5.30 a.m...
...I've been in prison too...
...His Easter sermon is on the familiar themes of hope, resurrection, and changed lives...
...George W. Bush...
...As he emerges from death row, a visibly moved Colson explains to the uninitiated members of his group that Prison Fellowship arranges for 600,000 Christmas presents to be delivered every year under the Angel Tree scheme to the children of prisoners...
Vol. 37 • June 2004 • No. 5
