These are difficult days to be a prison official.
As prison populations have exploded in the last decade, many departments of corrections have had to deal with budgetary cutbacks and fewer resources in their attempts to rehabilitate prisoners and to prepare them for release. Often, the prisons are ill-equipped to handle the physical addictions and mental health issues that contributed to the prison growth in the first place, and when many of these inmates return to criminal activity, it is often the prison officials who are held up to increased scrutiny for their failure to reform.
Yet despite the many serious challenges facing the correctional system here in the United States, there is an opportunity for change. In fact, it is precisely these same issues currently plaguing the system that also provide a foundation for fundamental reform.
In an editorial for the Omaha World-Herald, Prison Fellowship board member Bob Milligan suggests that the door is now open to partnerships between the private sector, faith-based organizations, and departments of corrections across the country.
“Just as education matters to more than elementary school teachers, crime prevention should not solely be a job for one department with limited resources,” says Milligan. “It should involve all of society.”
Milligan suggests that since all of society would stand to benefit from lower rates of recidivism, it would be in the best interest of all sectors of the community to invest in the reform and renewal of prisoners. By doing so, the cost of corrections can be contained, and contacts can be made between inmates and citizens that are more likely to prepare and support these inmates for their ultimate release.
“To bridge the gap and improve services to offenders, families and victims, we need everyone — businesses, churches, government agencies and service providers — to come alongside [corrections officals] as partners to create safer communities for us all,” he says.
Milligan acknowledges that increasing the budget for corrections is not a “silver bullet” that will fix all that ails the current system. The problem is not entirely a result of poor funding (as evidenced by a recent study claiming that the annual cost to house an inmate in a New York City prison is roughly equivalent to the cost of sending that same inmate to an Ivy League school). Rather, it is the product of a philosophy that views crime as something apart from civil society, and considers it something for someone else to handle.
“[I]t would be unwise to allow recent events to return us to tough-on-crime policies, which are fiscally irresponsible and have already failed to promote change in the hearts and lives of offenders,” Milligan concludes. “For a better future, we need greater investment in crime prevention and prisoner rehabilitation by all sectors of society.”
Such a reform would go beyond merely saving money (which it would), or even reducing recidivism (which would likely occur, too). Ultimately, it would engender a change of outlook that views the restoration of the prisoner as the responsibility of society as a whole, with everyone playing a role in changing the culture of crime. An approach like this would not only change the lives of prisoners, it would change the society to which they return.
