(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.
This month’s story is a recent one from an individual who has experienced the support of one of Better Life’s chaplains.
His experience reveals what the ‘pathway’ can look like from becoming eligible for parole to reintegration. Hopefully it provides a glimpse into the difference volunteers can make supporting an offender as they are reintegrated back into community!
In his own words:
I knew I wanted to succeed…to have a better life…for I’d spoken to God about this many times. I also knew that it was up to me to take the necessary next step, so I went to chat with the prison’s Pastor about expanding my community support.
Truth be told…God was watching/listening. He always is! No sooner had the idea of contacting Better Life been suggested as a possibility when Glenn, Assistant Chaplain with Better Life, knocked on the door. We engaged in a brief conversation, exchanging contact information, with a promise to connect subsequent to my release. With a week of my arrival at the halfway house and true to his word, Glenn was here to visit me! I must point out; such promises are not always honoured. As with any new acquaintance, I am slow to ‘warm’ to them, particularly when the concept of disclosure is required. However, feeling no pressure to do so, Glenn has proved to be an attentive listener. Moreover, he has provided very timely and sage advice. By and large though, Better Life has secured as a “sounding board” as I continue to navigate life amongst society once again.
We are months into my release, as well as a budding friendship. I have been truly blessed by virtue of the number of visits from Better Life. They (Glenn) have become an integral component of my effort to successfully reintegrate. I am eternally grateful.
Our goal is for the content we share with you to be as meaningful and valuable as possible.
As mentioned previously, we want to use this space to develop and communicate the pathway Better Life supports men and women on as they move from eligibility for parole to integration into a faith community.
But at the same time, we recognize the importance of stories.
We recently shared some stories of transformation in the lives of men and women coming out of incarceration with the local church they have connected to—remotely via Zoom, of course—and many of the staff were brought to tears. God is clearly at work, and what He is doing in the lives of men and women both within the Corrections Institutions and out on parole is awesome!
So we’re going to start weaving in more storytelling into our content calendar, alternating between highlighting various aspects of the process of reintegration and practical resources, and sharing the powerful stories of our men and women.
I also want to invite you to sign up as one of our prayer partners. Reintegration can be challenging.
We would love to have you praying with us for the men and women coming out of Corrections and practical needs and challenges they face.
Email us at prayerforbetterlife@gmail.com to join the list and get regular monthly and as-needed urgent prayer requests.
If you are a part of a faith community or ministry team already supporting an individual who is incarcerated or paroled, please email us prayer requests at prayerforbetterlife@gmail.com so we can pass those along to our prayer partners on a monthly basis. (Please write “urgent” in the subject line if it’s time-sensitive so we know to share it right away!)
Today we’re sharing the story of one of our care recipients.
YC had been doing well for a number of years after a significant time of incarceration. He is married and is meaningfully employed.
However, like with many the men and women we support, the COVID-19 pandemic, with all of its many changes and challenges, has had a significant impact on his well being.
YC recently violated a condition of his parole and was in lock-up for 48 hours—but came to a powerful understanding through his difficult experience.
He wrote his support network these words:
Dear friends,
I am writing this letter because I have been struggling very much in the last few months. My stressors have been building up and I have been having difficulties dealings with all of this.
I was locked up at the Chilliwack RCMP detachment for 48 hours on Easter Sunday. I was released on the following Tuesday. I was detained because of a breach on my parole conditions.
On Easter Saturday, feeling really depressed and overwhelmed with a lot of the stressors in my life, I went to visit a friend and started to feel really depressed. I started to drink one beer after another. After a couple I thought that I might as well keep drinking because I realized that I have already (messed) up, one or twelve doesn’t make a difference on (messing) up. I didn’t want to risk driving my vehicle anywhere, especially under the influence. I haven’t drank for so many years and not having had anything to eat all day, the drinking really hit me hard. I ended up sleeping there on their couch.
There was also very poor cell reception, so that I didn’t communicate at all with my (wife). (My wife) was extremely concerned about my whereabouts, she didn’t know if I had committed suicide, ran off the road and was laying at the bottom of a ditch or ravine somewhere. What I have done was extremely selfish and irresponsible. My bad choice of actions that Easter Saturday with dealing with my stressors and depression was out of character for me. I am truly sorry for having put (my wife), her family and all of my support group through hell by not having been able to deal with this in a better way.
It is too simple to say that this proves that I am only human, but no, I should have known better. This incident has made me realized that one of the contributing factors for this shortcoming is that I have been trying to deal with some issues by myself. In the last few years I have been distancing myself from my support group that I have built over the years.
I have now realized that I have the need to reconnect and tighten my support group. Realizing that I can’t do this on my own, I can’t deal with all my stressors all at once. I can deal with those stressors when they are one at the time, but when I let them pile up I get extremely overwhelmed and my depression goes into overdrive. Unfortunately, I have a difficult time opening up and sharing my weaknesses because I don’t want to burden anyone. That’s the reason that my response to “How are you?” is usually “fine.”
So I am reaching out to all of you, in the hope that I haven’t lost your friendships, trust, love and support. I am truly sorry if I have let anyone of you down. I’m so grateful to have my dear wife by my side to support me through these difficult times, but my wife cannot be my only support, because of my history, this is way too much for even her to handle. That is the reason why I need to reconnect with all of you.
Please pray for YC. His story represents the very real challenges of reintegration, as well as the game-changer having a supportive faith community can be in the lives of the men and women we care for.
For the past year, Bob and friends have been regularly visiting the inmates at San Quentin State Prison just north of San Francisco. Although the context is for Bob to teach a modified Dream Big workshop, the inmates have been the real teachers. They are living examples of grace, redemption, respect, and the courage to dream again.
Maybe you find yourself stuck in the circumstances of your life. Listen in to this thoughtful conversation between Bob Goff and Kevin (a.k.a. ‘Special Kay’), Vincent, and Brandon and be inspired by the courage of the inmates to dream for a new life.
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