As Better Life has worked together with faith communities across the Pacific Region, we hear many different responses to the invitation to provide reintegration support.
Some faith communities and their members feel that providing reintegration support is an important expression of their faith. They’re all in, and they want to provide support as effectively as possible.
Others respond with desire to get involved, but feel overwhelmed by questions.
Our hope at Better Life is that having clarity around a REINTEGRATION STRUCTURE AND SYSTEM answers many of your questions and gives you confidence that you can help develop a healthy reintegration pathway that can literally be life changing for a parolee and an invaluable contribution toward them experiencing a better life.
However, we recognize that Structures and Systems only take us so far.
We experience this in our own life. At times we have great aspirations, sometimes expressed in New Year’s resolution. But living out our resolutions can be another thing entirely.
This leads us to acknowledge that we’re all individuals who are made up of many different influences—our families, our experiences, and our habits, to name a few.
What type of influence has each of these areas had on our life?
As human beings, we each respond to varied circumstances in different ways. Specifically, we experience and are impacted by trauma in very different ways.
In your own family, your experience growing up may have impacted you in a radically different way than a sibling. You could have experienced very similar circumstances, but how you experienced those circumstances and integrated them may have been very different for each of you.
The same is true for a parolee.
You’ve listened to their story, you’ve created a pathway together that you hope will lead to a healthy reintegration experience, but so much of an individual’s experience, their growth, their ability to overcome painful experiences and trauma, and to believe that they can live a different and better life, rests with them.
With this understanding, we want to assure you that not only is Better Life made up of an experienced team of Reintegration Chaplains, but that we are a part of an invaluable network of organizations and caregivers committed to healthy reintegration.
The Better Life Reintegration Chaplain who, in many cases, has provided an inmate support for a year within the prison, who has worked with the inmate’s Correctional Team and has supported them to complete the recommended steps so that they can have a positive parole hearing outcome, is now available to support you as you support that parolee.
While the Better Life reintegration chaplain doesn’t remove their support from the inmate as they enter parole, they shift their primary support to you as a caregiver.
When you have questions, when you wonder what healthy next steps should be, when you’re concerned about certain patterns of thinking, or behaviour, and wonder what to do next, the Better Life Reintegration chaplain is available to provide you with support.
This is also true of the connections Better Life can provide you with various reintegration partners—often beginning with the parolee’s Parole Officer. Through the Parole Officer you can gain a clear understanding of what the parolee’s conditions are, as well as specific areas that may need attention (work, education, therapy, certain thought patterns, etc.)
Beyond a connection with a parolee’s Parole Officer, Better Life has close relationships with many Reintegration Partners operating in various regions and areas of specialization.
At Better Life we are here to support you. We believe that you can make a life changing difference in providing reintegration support, and we want to support you to do that effectively.
Thank you for joining us for this series on providing healthy reintegration. We’re grateful to be on this journey with you.
In the current Better Life Integration and Support series, we’re looking at the ingredients of healthy reintegration.
In the previous edition, we addressed the importance of mentors and volunteers understanding the Reintegration Structure.
We picture this Structure as a bridge that begins in the Correctional Institution and extends into the community. We envision the four essential components of the bridge as the support, the onramp, the main body of the bridge, and the offramp or exit. Each one of these stages requires specific types of support.
In this edition, we will look at SYSTEM. In other words, what works within the STRUCTURE of Reintegration to make the process function effectively?
Specifically, what can a mentor, volunteer, and community of faith provide to help a parolee have a healthy reintegration experience and move towards becoming a contributing member of their society?
At Better Life, we believe that a clear and healthy pathway can be created to support the the best possible outcomes for an individual’s reintegration.
We’d like to suggest a System that develops through three invaluable questions.
Let me underline that these questions are ones you can ask in conversation together with the parolee during the first month of parole.
In other words, everything that you and the parolee experience together is a product of developing a trusting relationship, which the reintegration pathway is built on.
So let me encourage you—don’t feel like you have to rush. Let the relationship develop, and out of the relationship, ask these three questions that allow a pathway to be created.
This is such an invaluable question. It’s obvious that a parolee has been places that have had a serious impact on their life.
It’s a question that addresses their crime, and in relationship to their crime, the conditions that they now have for their parole.
It’s also a question that address an individual’s challenges in life. For instance, a therapist once asked a group of men in a high security prison how many of them dreamed as little boys that they would be in the place where they are now? Of course, not one of them raised their hand. No one dreams of being incarcerated as a young boy, or young girl.
What we know is that a parolee has had certain experiences and responded to those experiences in a way that wasn’t healthy, wasn’t contributing to society.
On one hand, we don’t enter the work of providing reintegration support as a therapist, a psychologist, or psychiatrist. It’s not our role to provide professional therapy. But knowing a person’s story not only makes a caregiver aware of the comprehensive help that a parolee needs, but also recognizes the importance and supports the fundamental and life-giving experience of being known.
To emphasize this point, a parolee may not believe this is true. They may experience shame, or guilt and may have had their desire for secrecy reinforced over and over again within the context of a prison. Sharing their past may not come easily. However, we understand that hiddenness and secrecy do not bring about healing and growth into our life.
Our starting point on the road to a healthy reintegration is a person’s story.
Listening to their story (not judging or questioning, but listening), communicates the value you place on them and the care you desire to give them. The details of an individual’s story may come out over time, but as trust is built, this will be the outcome.
Before we move onto the second question, let me circle back to the connection between a parolee’s story and their conditions of parole. This is important because the most often asked questions by faith communities are, “Will we be safe? Will our community be safe? Will our children be safe?”
In response, there are a number of conditions that a parolee must follow.Some conditions are general and will apply to all parolees, and some are very specific, depending on the parolee’s crimes.
For instance, an individual who has had a sexually related offence, or an offence against a minor, will have very clear conditions restricting them from settings where there are minors present.
So, in summary, through a parolee’s story, we also learn of their parole conditions and supervision and can understand how best to provide safety for our faith community and for the offender. (Parole conditions also will be proactively shared with the faith community representative supporting reintegration.)
Through listening to the parolee’s story and offering support we begin the journey of providing a trusted relationship foundation that healthy reintegration is build upon.
The importance of this question may not be so obvious.
But a Better Life board member, a criminal law lawyer, puts the question into perspective like this:
What would it be like for you to be judged every day of your life for the worst day or moment of your life?
It’s hard to even envision, isn’t it?
What the question illustrates are the challenges that a criminal history and incarceration bring.
For instance, one ‘lifer’ who went on to experience faith and become a prison chaplain himself, tells of his experience on the day that he was released for parole. The prison guard looked at him and said, “See you back soon!”
Often this is the sentiment communicated. It’s informed by the way many inmates become institutionalized, and can sometimes begin to feel it’s easier to stay incarcerated than to face the many challenges reintegrating back into the community will bring.
As we ask a parolee the question “Where are you going?”, we are inviting the parolee into the experience of envisioning their life in a new way.
A way that is often impacted by the hope of their faith, and how their faith practices can allow them to see both themselves, and life around them in a new way. In many respects, this is one of the most important areas of support a caregiver can provide.
While the diversity of faith beliefs envision hope, love, forgiveness, grace differently, I was impacted through my conversation with an Imam who asked, “Adam, how can we hold an individual’s past and crime over them for the rest of their life, when God tells us that he forgives those who earnestly repent? If God can forgive, why don’t we?”
Again, there are distinctions between the many different faiths, but the Imam’s question was an important one to answer and have clarity on for any caregiver who is providing reintegration support.
We could ask, and answer, what elements of my faith can enable the parolee I’m working with to both envision and experience a life of forgiveness and contribution within our faith tradition?
In many respects the answer to this question will be informed by the parolee’s answer to question number one, Where Have You Been?
Through listening to the parolee’s story certain elements, specific needs, come to light.
It may be, on one hand, that the parolee is very mature in their faith. In fact, they may be at a place in their faith that they can provide support and help for others. We have seen numerous parolees use their incarceration as a ‘wake up call,’ where they either come to faith, or become serious/committed in their faith.
There are also Prison Chaplains who do an amazing job of helping inmates grow in their faith so that they are actually more mature in their faith practices when they reach parole than many in their faith community. In other words, we shouldn’t assume that all parolees are in need of others to teach and train them.
On the other hand, most, if not all faiths, recognize that we ‘never arrive.’ There is always a deeper experience of our faith that we can enter into.
Again, this is why the first question, ‘Where have you Been’ is so important. Through your conversation with a parolee, you will recognize the level of experience they have had in their faith practices and engagement, and whether or not they are in need of professional therapy, or education, or housing, etc. Their story, their needs, their path forward will be distinct and unique to them.
Better Life’s recommendation is that through the first month, or even first quarter of relationship building, you create and make an agreement of what the next period of time together will look like.
For instance, you may agree to a six month period of studying or practicing an element of your faith together.
The agreement may also include intentional conversations about other critical areas. Perhaps, the parolee is also undergoing addiction treatment, or mental healthy therapy, for instance. A part of your regular time together may be to incorporate space to talk about how they are feeling as they address their challenges of addiction.
You’re not engaging with the parolee as a therapist, but you are giving opportunity for them to talk about their experience.
What we call a Commitment of Trust Agreement can be invaluable because it specifies healthy relationship boundaries, the expected frequency of meeting, the duration of support (e.g., We will meet for six months and then we will evaluate), and even what you will focus on in your time together.
As an example, the invaluable organization (CoSA – Circles of Support and Accountability) uses a very similar agreement that is phenomenally effective in reducing recidivism (reoffending) with parolees who have a sexual offence history.
What Better Life has discovered is that the benefit of a parolee engaging in the practices of their faith community—prayers, services, etc.—are enormous. Many faith communities are welcoming and supportive to parolees attending their community.
However, what often provides the highest impact is the individual’s experience of relationship. This may be in the context of a member of the faith community regularly meeting with the parolee for coffee and conversation. It may be inviting the parolee into a small group that engages in providing support together, or having the parolee experience an existing small group as a means of experiencing healthy relationship.
Let me encourage you, use these three questions like tools in your tool box to help you provide support that leads to a parolee’s healthy reintegration.
2023 has been a year of growth and development for Better Life Integration and Support as we continue to refine our process for providing a healthy reintegration experience for offenders and parolees who ask for faith community reintegration.
While Better Life recognizes that each individual is unique (has a distinct story and experience), we also understand that healthy reintegration requires specific structure, system, and support.
In fact, this past summer (2023), we developed a new set of Faith Community Reintegration videos for individuals and faith communities providing reintegration support to access online. These short videos are built around:
Reintegration Structure
Reintegration System
Reintegration Support
To access this free online training resource, please email adam.betterlife@gmail.com for the link and password.
Over the next three blogs/newsletters, we’ll also look in more detail at the three components of healthy reintegration, as outlined above.
We begin with having a clear understanding of Reintegration Structure.
We picture Reintegration Structure as a Bridge. In fact, you’ll often hear us refer to the “Reintegration Bridge.”
The Reintegration Bridge is composed of four parts:
The Support holds the weight and stress of the bridge
The Onramp is where the bridge is entered
The main Body of the bridge
The Offramp is the exit from the bridge
1. The SUPPORT
We all recognize how essential support is for a (structural) bridge. Comprehensive support is just as essential for Reintegration, and not just in the sense of providing support to the parolee, but also in giving a mentor or volunteer the capacity and strength to provide reintegration support.
On one hand, providing reintegration support isn’t for the faint of heart. Every experience of providing support is unique, ranging from parolees that need intensive support, to those who require little support, but the experience can often be intense.
At the same time, there is such an opportunity for mentors and volunteers of faith to experience life transformation, both in themselves and in the individual they are supporting.
As you consider providing reintegration support, you can ask yourself the following questions:
How would you rate yourself in terms of your personal health, your emotional health, your relational health, your self-awareness?
How clear is your practice of personal boundaries? (If you’re unclear about the idea of boundaries, Drs. Cloud and Townsend wrote an excellent book on boundaries.)
Where do you get your support from?
How do your faith and faith practices provide you with clarity and strength when you are investing in others?
Of course these aren’t questions solely for providing reintegration support, but healthy life principles for each of us.
As you invest yourself in providing reintegration support, you need to be clear on where you gain your support to enable you to support another. As you enter into providing reintegration support, have a plan of what you are proactively doing so that you are and remain healthy.
Identify the people you can go to if you are feeling challenged, or discouraged, or in need of direction. It may be a group of close friends, a spiritual leader, or mentor from your faith community. We encourage you to identify those people in your life that can support you and pray for you as you begin this journey.
Without question, the experience of providing a parolee with reintegration support can be one of the greatest opportunities for you to grow in your own spiritual life.
2. The ONRAMP
The Onramp is well defined for Better Life. It illustrates what is normally a period of up to 12 months where support is offered to an offender in the Correctional Institution.
An inmate contacts Better Life, either through a prison chaplain, through their Institutional Parole Officer, or personally through the Better Life toll free number.
A Better Life staff member dedicated to that inmate’s specific prison meets with them and undertakes an intake interview.
During the interview there are specific questions that we ask, but in general, we are seeking to understand an inmate’s motivation and the degree of interest they have in seeking reintegration support from a faith community.
One of Better Life’s non-negotiables is the willingness of an inmate to provide full disclosure.
We take a faith community’s trust very seriously, and therefore, view an inmate’s willingness to provide full disclosure an essential for their healthy reintegration experience and for the potential of their relationship with the faith community, mentors and volunteers.
What’s significant for mentors and volunteers to understand is during that 12 month period, a Better Life staff member is working closely with the inmate to develop a relationship of trust with them, to understand their correctional management plan and team, and to begin building a connection with a potential faith community for when they achieve a positive parole hearing outcome.
The relationship of trust between the inmate and the Better Life staff member is invaluable for the faith community to understand the needs of the inmate and the faith community’s potential to support them.
3. The BODY of the Bridge
Best practice in healthy reintegration is, as an inmate enters into parole, they are quickly connected with their supportive faith community. This connection may have already been established while the inmate was within the Correctional Institution.
Better Life’s practice is that the week an individual enters parole, if not the day of, the parolee is introduced to a representative of their respective faith community.
At times, the individual’s community parole officer may request to be included in this meeting.
During the initial meeting the parolee will share their story. A Parolee’s willingness to share their story helps to ensure their safety and the safety of the faith community as well, and begins to create a healthy reintegration pathway.
The initial meeting is also an opportunity for the faith community representative to talk about the ways a parolee can access the community and experience their support.
While each of the four stages of the Reintegration Bridge are important, the contribution of Stage Three is invaluable. It is in and through the faith community that a parolee experiences:
The opportunity to experience trusted relationship(s)
Engagement in empowering faith practices
Support for the tangible needs that a parolee may have, including:
Employment
Housing
Education
Therapy, which may address areas of Trauma, Addiction and Mental Health
4. The OFFRAMP
The goal of reintegration is a healthy reintegration experience, with the ultimate outcome that a parolee becomes a contributing member of society.
However, it’s important to recognize that healthy reintegration isn’t always linear.
In other words, reintegration support doesn’t guarantee that the parolee will never again experience challenges with addiction, or mental health, certain temptations or unhealthy behaviours.
A Parolee’s experiences along the reintegration pathway are always informing those that provide support with a clearer picture of what is going to help the parolee move forward in their reintegration.
For instance, an offender enters parole and is provided with reintegration support by loving, wise caregivers. But the offender cannot overcome the temptations of their addiction, and by giving into their addiction, has parole revoked because they breached their conditions.
It may be easy to believe that the caregivers failed to provide healthy reintegration support. However, instead of a sense of failure, such experiences are invaluable in helping provide a more holistic, comprehensive pathway for the parolee.
The parolee’s challenges with addiction, or any challenges for that matter, alert us to the specifics of what the individual needs to move forward.
For example:
For an individual that struggles with challenges with alcohol or drug addiction, the new plan will include the individual going into addiction treatment.
For those who are challenged by sexual addiction, the new plan will include becoming a member of a CoSA group that specifically provides structure and accountability for sexual addiction.
For those who are overwhelmed by trauma, or are challenged by other issues of mental health/illness, the new plan will include being under the care of a therapist, or a psychiatrist, if medication is required for treatment.
The point is, we use the awareness that comes from the parolee’s experience to inform what a healthy reintegration pathway will look like for the individual.
In conclusion, the support and development of trusted relationships that come from members of a parolee’s faith community are invaluable for their healthy reintegration.
While a parolee’s reintegration may not always be linear, the development of trusted relationships with faith community caregivers can be life changing.
In the next Better Life Newsletter we will look at the importance of having a clear REINTEGRATION SYSTEM.
At Better Life Integration & Support, we are committed to providing resources and support so that individuals who have experienced incarceration can have a healthy reintegration back into the community.
As we continue in our series on the impact of trauma, we recognize, by virtue of being human beings, we have all experienced varying degrees of trauma.
We also understand that the men and women we love and support through their community reintegration have often both inflicted trauma through their crime, but also been radically impacted by trauma, generally through difficult childhood experiences, as well as during their incarceration.
This month, Better Life highlights the invaluable Smart Family Podcast episode “SFP 083 How Developmental Trauma Shows Up in Your Family Relationships with Dr. Kathleen Murphy; Using Polyvagal Theory to Understand the Impacts of Childhood Trauma in Adulthood; How to Promote Healing.”
SFP 083 How Developmental Trauma Shows Up in Your Family Relationships with Dr. Kathleen Murphy; Using Polyvagal Theory to Understand the Impacts of Childhood Trauma in Adulthood; How to Promote Healing –
Smart Family Podcast
Ever wondered about why it's sometimes hard to sync up your intentions for your relationships, and the ways you actually show up? Childhood trauma isn't necessarily what you think it is – we tend to think of the death of a parent or being involved in a life-threatening incident or being sexually abused when we talk about the lasting impacts of trauma (and rightfully so), but sometimes the sources of trauma are not obviously recognized. Trauma expert Dr. Kathleen Murphy joins us for an in-depth exploration of the ways developmental or complex trauma experienced before adulthood may manifest in words and behaviours in our couple relationships and parenting. If you've been treated abusively in your past, you may want to invite a friend to listen along with you and be there, for support. What Dr. Murphy shares is so honest, insightful and powerful, you won't want to miss this conversation, whether it applies to you personally or someone close to you.
As we head into a brand new year, I was curious to look back on the level of reintegration support provided by the Better Life Team and our amazing community over the past year.
One part of Better Life’s responsibility as the Correctional Service Canada (CSC) Pacific Region Faith Community Reintegration Partner (FCRP) is month-end reporting, so I get a regular look at our stats. However, I was still surprised by the number of men and women Better Life has had the privilege of supporting over the course of a whole year.
As you may know, Better Life is often invited into the process of providing reintegration support at one of the nine Correctional Institutions in the Pacific Region (BC and the Yukon), usually within twelve months prior to an individual’s parole hearing. This is followed by another twelve-month period during which the Better Life Team helps with the transition period by reintegrating men and women into their community of faith.
How many men and women? Including both Institutional and Community support:
178 in the Lower Mainland/Fraser Valley/Central BC, plus
30 in Victoria/on Vancouver Island
Providing reintegration support for these 208 individuals equalled 3,532 “reportable” hours of support.
Staggering, isn’t it?
Staggering both that the Better Life Team provided that many hours of support and frankly, that so many hours of support were required for just the portion of individuals who accept Better Life’s support—because all that is just a drop in the bucket when compared to the many men and women that enter parole without any support at all.
What we have found to be true is that healthy reintegration requires support and structure in the context of relationships of trust and accountability.
However, behind the numbers, what strikes me most deeply is that behind a number is a life.
Curiosity begs us ask the question, why commit crimes?
What are the series of events, the life, the experiences that led someone to offend, to break the law?
The answer to that question is very complex and is answered by each individual’s unique story. However, one common denominator is trauma.
What life trauma, and as we are learning, what generational trauma even, has led this individual to commit a crime, or even lead a life of crime?
And most importantly, is there a way to help address and heal the trauma that often underlies an individual’s criminal behaviour?
Again, there is complexity to any answer. However, what we have been discovering is the development of very effective treatments for trauma that, once undergone, can provide an opportunity for healing, growth and consequently, experiencing a new and better life.
One of Better Life’s Board of Directors is a psychotherapist who first exposed the Better Life team to an effective therapy called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy.
In so many respects, EMDR is a therapy that affirms the beliefs of people of faith, specifically the Christian faith, and the understanding that human beings are created in the image of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, in such a way that trauma can have a far-reaching impact in preventing us from experiencing the life that God created us for.
I’m going to allow the experts to finish the story. In this podcast, two women of faith, Dr. Anita Philips, with therapist Kobe Campbell, provide an excellent and encouraging introduction to EMDR therapy.
My hope is that this can be a resource as you support men and women through their experiences of trauma, and potentially, a treatment that can be valuable to you personally.
The podcast can be accessed here.* (*If you’re not on an Apple device, the podcast is by Dr. Anita Phillips (In The Light: The Podcast) titled ‘The Dwelling Place,’ October 21, 2022.)
Your body is a sacred dwelling. Generations of memories are stored within you. Some are beautiful and some really hurt. In this follow up to our Story Time episode we're diving deeper into how generational trauma manifests in our bodies. Guest therapist, Kobe Campbell is our guide on this leg of the healing journey. She's introducing us to the power of EMDR therapy and Dr. Anita is switching things up by putting herself in the client chair to make sure you have the tools you need to dwell in peace and wholeness. Get 20% off your first purchase of any Munk Pack product by visiting Munkpack.com and entering our code ANITA at checkout.
Other than the recent forest fire smoke, it’s been beautiful in the Fraser Valley.
As mentioned in a previous update, one of the ongoing challenges that offenders and paroles face is the battle against addiction.
I am no expert in addiction, although I’ve had the privilege to support numerous friends and family through facing the challenges of addiction, but one of the experts who has helped me understand the challenges and treatments of addiction more clearly is Dr. Gabor Maté.
Dr. Maté was very active in caring for patients with significant addiction challenges in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. I find his book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, invaluable. His most recent book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, is also very relevant for the support we provide in reintegration.
While it doesn’t communicate from a ‘faith’ perspective, I believe it can be invaluable in helping all of us understand the vulnerabilities in each of our lives where we are especially susceptible to temptation and weakness.
(Edit for clarity: I just want to take a moment and emphasize that this interview in no way represents Better Life’s endorsement of spiritual or cultural practices discussed in the course of the podcast. My hope is that we could learn from Dr. Maté’s expertise regarding addiction, specifically the discussion of issues of attachment and vulnerability, and the role they play in addiction and recovery.)
In FCRP Part 2, we mentioned that there can be other reintegration pathways better suited to the particular needs of an individual, and when anotherorganization can provide a better match of resources and support, we’re happy to make referrals. For example:
Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA)
CoSA is a unique and innovative community justice initiative for post release support and accountability of offenders in and by the community. CoSA VFV also provides public education programming on how to create safe communities for all.
We care for all those that have been impacted by crime. We regularly visit our community’s correctional institutions, providing faith-based programs. We also engage our Catholic schools and parishes, promoting awareness about social teaching and restorative justice.
(This is Part 3 of a series on Faith Community Reintegration. Read Part 1 and Part 2.)
Better Life has a clear and intentional pathway for supporting an offender in their desire to experience healthy reintegration.
While, sadly, there are no silver bullets when it comes to reintegration, there are game-changers.
Relationship is vital.
Many men and women coming out of Corrections institutions—often because of the culture they experience within the prisons—are asking the question, “who can I trust?”
The answer is found in communities of people whose faith leads them to be:
welcoming to marginalized people
relationally authentic (i.e., “my faith leads me to realize I don’t have my life together”)
seeking to live their lives by a consistent expression of values inspired by their faith
In so many respects, this is why faith community reintegration can have such a far-reaching impact on lowering recidivism.
Better Life is committed to helping individuals from all faiths to connect with their faith communities, as per the terms of our contract with Corrections Canada as a Faith Community Reintegration Project (FCRP). While our organization is comprised of individuals who are followers of Jesus, we engage with offenders of all faith backgrounds and commit to exemplifying the person of Jesus through everything we do, including supporting offenders to connect with their chosen faith communities.
We are constantly reaching out to faith community leaders to communicate what we do and the difference that a faith community can have in helping a parolee experience a healthy reintegration.
Better Life’s commitment is to be working with faith communities who believe their faith leads them to invest in the support and care of men and women on parole.
To be clear, Better Life’s practice is not to ask faith communities to adopt a “Better Life reintegration program.”
Instead, we engage with faith communities around the essential elements of healthy reintegration they may already have and could further develop within their community and offer our support as a resource centre.
Some of these essential elements include:
Guardrails
Another name for this is Boundaries.
What do a faith community’s members need to know to provide healthy relationships and safety—both for individuals on parole, but also for the rest of their community?
Healthy guardrails protect everyone and ensure the best outcomes possible.
(Next month we’ll look at what specific Guardrails are needed.)
Growth
In the context of a Christian faith community or church we might call this discipleship.
What pathway can the community lead an offender on to help them continue to grow and develop and to experience a healthy integration into the community?
This will look somewhat different for different faith communities, but the common and valuable essentials are expressed through relationship:
Who are the committed individuals who are going to support the parolee?
What are they going to engage around that will continue to help the parolee to grow and develop?
Do they understand the unique challenges a parolee faces?
Things that many of us take for granted can be a significant challenges for a parolee.
These include housing (following the halfway house), employment, groceries, counselling for trauma, and in some cases, addiction.
In the November newsletter, we will provide one possible outline for a small group structure that helps individuals grow in their faith and development.
Essentially, Better Life values faith communities as relational resource centres. Within the faith community is every resource a parolee needs to continue to move forward. And the faith community makes an invaluable contribution to a parolee’s experience and in the lowering of the recidivism rate.
Faith Community reintegration is a game-changer and a life-changer for everyone involved.
This is not limited to the offenders. Involved members of the faith communities often remark that they receive more through supporting offenders than they give, while the community at large benefits as incidents of crime and violence are reduced.
Better Life is developing a “toolbox” that it will offer for training purposes at faith communities, and also plans to make available on our website in the coming months.
If you have questions about volunteering and how to involve your faith community in providing support for an individual’s reintegration, please don’t hesitate to contact our General Director, Adam Wiggins, at adam.betterlife@gmail.com.
Yes, this comes from a different context, a different country, BUT it illustrates the difference, the hope, the potential that we can introduce into an individual’s life when they are ‘reintegrated’ from prison into a faith community. It’s a game-changer and a life-changer for many, and such a valuable investment!
Better Life Integration & Support Society 
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