JUSTICE
A few years ago we had the privilege of going into Wandsworth Prison on a regular basis to spend time with the prisoners.
The initial idea was to go in through the Christian chaplaincy and bring spiritual nourishment to the inmates, whatever level of faith or not they might bring into the room. It quickly became apparent we needed other tools in our bag to loosen them up first and find out who they really were - cutting straight to the chase felt too abrupt.
I always remember how my parents used silly party games to break the ice at our house when guests arrived - with often distant family members and neighbours who hadn’t necessarily met. This seemed like an obvious thing to try and soon we were sat in a circle playing ‘ZIip-Boing’ or ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’ (more fun than it sounds) with laughter erupting as the prisoners became firstly capable and then competitive at the games they were fast learning.
With the ice broken, it was easier to invite them to open up about their personal journeys. We often used music to do this. On Esther’s old guitar, she would hammer some Mumford & Sons, Cat Stevens or Bob Marley - tunes they knew with a bit of obvious meaning within them. Again, we would see that humanity begin to glow as they stood up and sang with us, often with great passion,
The chaplain in the prison was the only person in the room who knew the criminal background of each person, some of the details of which were apparently quite grim but we were not privy to that information and never asked - we just encountered these men as they presented in the room and pretty well every one of the 30 or so men we met over two years had something genuinely unique and delightful about them.
Esther and I didn’t just go alone on those visits. We took a team of people with us from different churches, including a former inmate of the prison (who proved indispensable for obvious reasons). In the early days, when we said ‘goodbye‘ and headed out through the multiple steel doors, looking up at two rows of razor-wire on the walls above, we noticed that some of our volunteers were quietly weeping. They had come to know, even to love, some of these men and yet, as we headed off to the pub for a pint and a burger, they returned to their tiny cells to be locked in for another day.
I understand the complexities of justice and public safety, but it is hard to think of these men, often young, in the prime of their lives, so rich in character and potential, being caged for the mistakes they have made. I recently heard an idiom that has really helped me with my own issues of judging others, and it is simply this…
“If you knew the story from the start, you would understand.”
Has justice been very hard on some of these people? People who were so full of promise, but were unjustly treated themselves during childhood, and then just went on to perpetrate that to others and in so doing, sealed their fate.
