I is for INMATES

I’ve been in prison several times. Just visiting! It wasn’t an experience I particularly enjoyed and happened more out of duty rather than desire to be there. But it was a million light years away from the life portrayed on that Ronnie Barker sitcom, ‘Porridge’, from a few years back. A lot of what I remember came flooding back when I watched a recent television documentary about San Quentin prison in America. It was a world within a world, with all the inmates more or less affiliated to a particular group based on their colour, religion or sexual persuasion. This was a place where the most violent people in the country were kept, away from the ‘normal’ people of society and yet it was here that violence seemed to reign, despite the best efforts of those in charge. Where the laws of the jungle ruled and where the colour of your skin or your ethnic background could either save you or kill you. This was a world where some found love, others found a route to channel their hate and few had any regrets for their past misdemeanours. So most emerged unchanged but few emerged unscathed.

The first time I entered Crumlin Road prison in Belfast, was in the back of a van, not in handcuffs or surrounded by policemen, but as part of a gospel group that had been invited to perform in front of a captive audience. It seemed to take for ever to actually get into the main part of the building and I suppose because this was at the height of the troubles in our province, security checks were more rigorous than you would expect now.But it seemed that doors and gates were constantly being unlocked in front of us and locked again behind us and the van itself was given a thorough inspection, even underneath to ensure that nothing sinister was being smuggle into the jail. I’m glad it wasn’t a country that was intolerant of our faith for I wouldn’t have had a chance of smuggling Bibles beyond the front entrance. Still, it’s nice to know that you can take your faith anywhere unnoticed, into any gathering and man’s inspections cannot stop God’s message. Anyway, some half to three quarters of an hour later the prison Chaplain eventually was able to guide us into the ‘chapel’ where the concert would take place and we then had about half an hour or less to set up in readiness for an influx of inmates. Soon the clanging of doors heralded their arrival and slowly they files into the pews on both sides with a few guards making sure they didn't venture as far as the stage. Mind you it would have been difficult to stop them if they had all chosen to ignore their minders. I couldn't help noticing how young so many of them were, teenagers not ready academically to leave school but streetwise beyond their years. And then, when all had settled, a select few appeared upstairs in the gallery, inmates unable to mingle freely with the others because the crimes they had committed compromised their own safety. That's when I learned that even within the most hardened criminal minds, there are crimes that just cannot be accepted. Still, we all had a good time, the inmates sang, clapped and listened and when it was all over, filed out with a wave of thanks to their own level of freedom. But it had been a thought provoking experience and I wondered if any of them had felt God speak during that hour. We would return several more times to the same platform and the same routine searches to many of the same inmates but over the years we would recognise a few of those familiar faces in our newspapers, victims of the hate in our land and losers in the survival of the jungle beyond the prison gates.

I have driven past and been inside other prisons but nothing prepares you for that world and every experience of that way of life is a reminder of God's grace to me. And yet my lasting image is not of the evil deeds that have put them there nor of the codes they make that permit their survival both mentally and physically. But rather the faces and the smiles that remind me that they are as human as I am and God loves them just as much as He loves me. Jesus said 'For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.' And Peter confirmed that the gospel was not just for a few when he reiterated the prophet Joel's words by proclaiming 'And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.' For all those who are prisoners of their sin, inmates in Satan's jail, remember the words of that old hymn 'My chains fell off, my heart was free,I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.' In jail. Just visiting? Or just leaving?