"A Gigantic Prison Enterprise" ... As Seen By a Chaplain in Prison & Family Ministry

by Cynthia StengelThe Cold War may have ended, but the brutality of the Soviet Union was still fixed in our minds. One of the chilling aspects of that society was the rate of imprisoning their citizens – the highest in the world.  That’s when I became personally acquainted with one of our state prisons. I was an LSSI Chaplain for their Prison & Family Ministry program in the early 90’s, with the goal of offering spiritual care to women prisoners and keeping them in touch with their children. People often asked whether I was afraid to be walking around the prison facilities. Actually, as I learned more I found the system itself more scary.Thanks to our “war on drugs”, incarceration had become a growth industry. In 1970, there were under 200,000 people in our state and federal prisons. By 1998, the US incarceration rate surpassed that of the Soviets. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on drug charges, and 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession.  Mandatory sentences and “three strikes” laws ensured that the jails were filled, more are being built, and now there is a growing “for profit” prison industry.Back in the early 90’s we could see that prisons would gobble up our budget dollars, causing cutbacks in education, and now we see it: for the 2009-2010 school year [k-12] Illinois spent $11,634 per pupil, and $38,268 per inmate. http://www.vera.org/pubs/price-prisonsAnd it’s not just the money…the incarceration industry is ruining lives and communities—not only those of the prisoners, their families and communities (for a lifetime), but also of the individuals who work in the system and the communities they live in.  Having total control over an individual’s daily life is morally corrosive, as I witnessed. In some Illinois counties, the number of prisoners is greater than the number of local residents; a prison is the primary source of jobs and income in some desperately poor communities, which are located far from the families of the inmates. The biggest factor in inmate recidivism (re-incarceration) is being disconnected from children and families.In general, this gigantic prison enterprise flies below the radar – we don’t hear much about it, and we don’t really want to know, until it hits someone we know.  But that doesn’t mean it doesn't touch every one of us.  Every tax dollar squeezed from education and social wellbeing, every abused and angry inmate released to our communities, every youth who is permanently marked and marginalized, every corporation that grows rich trading on human misery and influences state and local laws—these affect us all.We are fortunate at St. Luke’s to have an active and Social Ministry committee that works to raise our awareness of the important issues of our society, helps us think through them, and supports us in shaping a healing response. They’re sponsoring a discussion of “The New Jim Crow” on Wednesday nights.  Come and add your perspective. As the ELCA tag line reminds us:  “God’s work, our hands. “Cynthia Stengel is a rostered leader in the Metro Chicago Synod, ELCA, and a member of St. Luke’s Logan Square.The first meeting of the New Jim Crow book group at St. Luke's meets Wednesday, February 12,  2014, at 7:30 p.m.  Join us!