Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Prison


alcatraz_inside
Originally uploaded by lil'murmurs.
Yesterday I helped take 13 year 10 and 11 pupils to a prison. It was a strange day for many reasons. Firstly I was quite looking forward to meeting real inmates and seeing inside a real working prison. Secondly and the rather scary reason was that these pupils had been hand picked because it seems that they are in risk of ending up in prison!

It was a very insightful day. We were taken on a tour, shown the shower block, a cell and the common room. We then went to the chapel and were shown what you would receive in prison i.e. clothes, bedding and your ration pack, either chocolate and sweets or a smokers pack. Next they talked to us about prison life, the violence, loneliness what it is really like. This was an eye opener, most trouble happens in prison because of debt, what ever you borrow you pay back double. We saw pictures of injuries received from violence in prison.

After this we saw a drama written and preformed by the inmates themselves. It depicted the life of one person and the choices they made along with what could have happened had they have chosen differently. It was interspersed with their stories. At the end we were able to ask them questions. It was something different, most of the 25 inmates we met had got to prison because of drugs.

I came away deeply affected by the whole day, these men knew that they had made bad choices in their lives, many of them had been dealt a bad hand in life but they said that it was still themselves who had made the choices to put them in jail. So often we pass blame to others for the reason why we are in the crap, but sometimes we put ourselves there.

I am not saying that they are innocent, as they would agree that they are not, but they say that they have seen the error of their ways and are hoping to help young people make better choices for their futures.

It also made me think about how they must get treated once they have left prison. WOuld I give them a job? Not sure? I would like to say yes, but in reality not sure I would.

Jesus was and is an amazing person, being able look past all this stuff, I know that in God's eyes I have sinned just as bad if not worse than those guys in that prison, but God still gives me chance after chance, shouldn't we do the same?

1 comment:

Emma Finlayson said...

Well, my mum was just reading a paper and it had a list of names where chances are that a person owning that name will cause trouble. Guess what one name was that came up? Oh yes, Kieran it was!