NCJ Number
207451
Date Published
March 2002
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the use of church-based inmate reentry programs, specifically examining two assumptions underlying strategic thinking about inmate reentry: the understanding of prisons as places where criminals are punished and that reintegration into the community via religious institutions implies an understanding of churches, mosques, and synagogues as community institutions.
Abstract
The idea of church-based prisoner reentry programs has something in common with the older moral reform movement with both linking crime and disorder not only with personal weaknesses, but with a presumed breakdown of ordering functions in local community life. This paper discusses prisoner reentry and begins with the fact of the released criminal; it admits that time spent in prison does not conclusively reform him or her. It is understood that prisons are places where criminals are punished. The concern is with those aspects of the community, or the lack thereof, that permit or encourage ex-offenders to continue in their criminal careers. The implication is that churches can form a sacred safety net to catch those who have fallen, or might fall, into trouble with the law. Churches are considered natural and ideal candidates in the transformation of sinner to saint. The assumption is that churches are open communities. They are open to serving nonmembers as well as members, and they are somehow embedded in the social life of the neighborhoods where they happen to congregate.