Reducing re-offending

A Christian group, seeking to promote interest in criminal justice among churches, has been given encouragement by a government report on social disadvantage.

The Social Exclusion Unit report, Reducing Re-Offending by Ex-Prisoners, identifies nine key factors in offending. These include issues such as poor education, poor employment and housing prospects, and - crucially - the absence of stable and supportive family networks.

The report gives stark facts about family breakdown:

* Nearly half of all prisoners lose contact with family while in custody.

* Compared with the population at large, prisoners are 13 times more likely to have been in care as a child.

* Each year, 125,000 children are affected by the imprisonment of a parent.

The report adds that visiting facilities at prisons are often inadequate; some visiting rooms are described as 'unpleasant and frightening, particularly for children'. And there is said to be scarcely any post-release support for families, when relationships are even more at risk of breaking down.

Family support

The Churches' Criminal Justice Forum had already identified family support as being important for prisoners, and has now set up a family visiting group to promote and encourage local schemes which improve visiting arrangements, particularly in women's prisons. These include negotiating longer and more relaxed visits for families, providing play helpers so that children can be cared for while parents talk seriously, and providing escorts for teenagers who want to visit a parent alone. Local community chaplaincy projects are being formed which involve churchgoers in helping to support released prisoners who do not have family ties.

A project, which involves the chaplaincy team at Low Newton Prison at Durham, will provide transport to bus and rail stations for prisoners on release. Many who leave prison with good intentions, often with their possessions in an easily-recognisable prison bag, fall prey to the attentions of drug pushers before they reach their planned destination.

CCJF was formed two and a half years ago as a national, ecumenical group to raise awareness of Christian concerns in local churches and to encourage church-going people to be involved in informed and practical ways. Criminal Justice Officer Stuart Dew explains: 'Churches are sometimes reluctant to take up an issue which they may see as radical, political, too close to home for comfort, or with people they may see as undeserving. However, I have no doubt that Christ would have included both offenders and victims, when he said his calling was to outcasts, not respectable folk'.

Outworking of teaching

He adds: 'The criminal justice arena can be the logical outworking of Christian teaching on justice, compassion, forgiveness, repentance and restoration. Jesus scolded the Pharisees for tithing their garden herbs but neglecting justice. He showed he was willing to take direct action against wrong-doing by upturning the tables of the moneylenders. He showed compassion to the woman caught in adultery (who was, arguably, both offender and victim). He also demonstrated that if people truly confessed their guilt and resolved to start afresh, they were worthy of a second chance; one of the two robbers crucified with Him did so, and was restored within the Kingdom of God'.

Less of a contest

Restorative Justice initiatives, which make sentencing and punishment less of a contest between offender and state, and allow both victim and community to have a voice, are promoted as a way of dealing with wrong-doing which accords with Christian principles. Restorative Justice acknowledges the wrong that has been done to the victim, calls the offender to account, provides him or her with an opportunity to make reparation, directly, if appropriate, and, through mediation, allows both victim and offender to move on. Christian people are being encouraged to put themselves forward as community representatives on the local panels which are now dealing with young first offenders in this way. Stuart Dew suggests: 'Mediation should be a concept that Christians are comfortable with, for Christ came to mediate between a fallen humanity and God; it is through his mercy and forgiveness, that we are able to be restored'.

Churches which may be daunted by direct action are encouraged to see that a parent and toddler group, which promotes both a sense of family and community, or a youth activity, which offers caring concern and good role modelling for disaffected teenagers, may ultimately be more rewarding forms of crime prevention than fitting a burglar alarm or forming a Neighbourhood Watch.

Says Stuart Dew: 'Above all, we seek a greater acknowledgement that the courts, the probation officers and the prisons are dealing not only with broken laws, but also with broken lives'.

Reducing re-offending

Family support

Outworking of teaching

Less of a contest

Stuart Dew, Churches' Criminal Justice Forum

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