BBC Radio 4 2016-02-09

BBC Radio 4 2016-02-09

It was forty years ago, when I worked in the Netherlands, that I first became aware that Britain did not have all the answers.

I had a friend called Josef who, like many young Dutch people spoke several languages fluently. He was studying criminology and was occasionally called on by the police to help them interview Frenchmen or Spaniards who had been arrested. The police were keen, whenever possible, to prevent those under investigation from spending even a night in the cells.

It wasn't that the Dutch were soft on crime. Rather, they wanted to ensure that only those who seriously merited incarceration should be locked up. Then, as now, most European nations had levels of imprisonment far below that of the United Kingdom.

I never thought that prisons were a legitimate faith interest until I realised how many of the stars in the religious firmament in the past and present had been behind bars, people like Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, all the way up to Martin Luther King.

Of course, you might argue, they never did anything really wrong, but to some extent right and wrong are on a variable spectrum. Whether it is the poets who wrote the psalms, the authors of the book of Isaiah or the words of Jesus himself, there is ample witness that one of the passions of God is to liberate those who should not be in prison...

...people like Garry, who I knew for ten years before his premature death.... perhaps the most gifted intellectual I have ever met. As I child he had been sexually abused, neglected, and debarred from conventional schooling. Yet while incarcerated, he taught himself Greek, read German philosophers and theologians and won a place at university. His undoubted abilities were never identified or encouraged in prison, nor in 8 years was he prepared for freedom. I once asked him how many men in his wing he thought were unable to read or write or may have been victims of abuse. He reckoned around a third.

So it is welcome news that the Prime Minister is rethinking penal policy. While we will always have to imprison people, wouldn't it be great if prisons stopped being referred to as establishments which cultivate criminality? Instead they could become valued for reforming lives and developing potentials for self esteem, responsible living, and good citizenship.

In Jesus' great parable of the sheep and the goats, a king indicts the self-righteous by listing all the good they failed to do. In response they reply among other things, ' When did we see you in prison and not care for you?' Maybe it's because prisons and their practices have had such a low and negative public profile, that we all might claim ignorance of their shortcomings. If - for the good of us all - they become much more part of positive public concern and conversation, we may be spared the censure of heaven.