HMP Grendon: What is easier?

We light a fire and hunker down with a houseful of children and friends. Last trip out before Snow closed in was the annual Carol Service at HMP Grendon. This is the only UK Psychiatric prison, founded in 1962. The service was devised by Keith Salter, Co-ordinating chaplain, and led by Major Bert Roper of the Salvation Army. It was good to catch up personally with one or two prisoners I remember from two years ago at this same event.

Each of its six wings operates as a therapeutic community, under competent psychiatric supervision. This is a specialised approach that wouldn’t work for every prisoner, and it has its misses as well as hits, but the fact is it often actually sorts out people’s lives to go straight. Grendon 2-year reoffending rates are dramatically lower than usual for English prisons — as much as ten times lower. Fewer criminals, less crime suits me and, you might think, when you consider the terrible personal impact of crime on innocent peoples’ lives, everyone else. But you’d be wrong. Grendon’s work can be vulnerable to misunderstanding and frustrating limitations:

1. Decent people feel naturally disgusted and angry about serious crime — punishment is very much one reason people are, rightly, deprived of their liberty in prison. But after we have all got angry, it’s time to get even, and to protect ourselves for the future. Grendon’s therapeutic approach can be caricatured by ignorant journalists as a soft option for hard people. Actually most inmates find it considerably harder work, some would say a fitter punishment, to have to confront and work through the roots of their wrongdoing and grow up, than just become designer criminals who won’t take responsibility for behaviour or attitudes. Civil Servants and politicians, however, don’t always have the moral courage to stand up to some of the more ignorant and strident media voices — result = more criminals and higher crime.
   
   
2. Experience of prisons, on and off, over twenty years has shown me that when times are financially tight resources tend to go into security, ideologically driven restructuring, and media stunts. Ther’s little left for the labour intensive régimes that dedicated professionals use to turn criminals straight. There are Nordic societies where they have almost abolished conventional imprisonment, with crime rates a tiny fraction of ours in the UK — but until we have the wit and courage to be more pragmatic in our response to crime, it’s porridge for us all, in a way...

h/t Art collected by the Koestler Trust

Trading control for wholeness...

I’ve just had a spiritually refreshing conversation with Steve Bushell, Chaplain of our local Mental health NHS trust. Steve has studied Desert Spirituality closely, and together with excellent senior colleagues in the trust is working out a fascinating new integrated approach to Spiritual Care. As he talked about his work, I was reminded of Robin Skynner’s Institutes and how to survive them. There Dr Skynner proved the key contribution staff attitude makes to the health of the whole and the healing of patients. This closes the gap between Spirituality and Religion, which has been so disastrous in Western Christianity.

The key to good healthcare, we decided, was the willingness and ability of the hierarchs to give away control, to support and facilitate rather than direct people in what becomes a healing community, not a controlled-and-controlling bureaucracy. What the hierarchy does builds either understanding and respect, or cynicism, depending on its alignment with its professed values. This reminded me of a wise, experienced and perceptive Vicar telling me recently how he had observed that when he stopped forcing his initiatives on people and doing stuff, far more happened, and in a different, more spiritually significant way. More the Coach, less the professional Guardian of the Sacred; more the resourceful friend, less the eccentric drill sergeant. See Mark 10:42.

Steve and I scoped the role of of the Chaplain as someone who learns and listens carefully to the languages people use to express themselves, a spiritual interpreter, someone who can hold the lines and ask key questions of any and all, including themselves. The prime task is to help people identify where God is in their lives so that he can grow their Sacred Centre... Like Vicars?

Scribble, Scribble, Mr Gibbon

The Blogosphere is an essentially flat place, what Monty Python used to call an autonomous collective, hardly friendly to the whole idea of elites and awards, except the sort you award yourself. I have had rather ambivalent personal feelings about gongs, ever since Father Ted came unstuck over his Golden Cleric award. Nevertheless, the superior graphics, catchy red border, and unsolicited nature of the Superior Scribbler Award has subverted my anarcho-syndicalist tendencies and won my heart to this improbable enterprise. This is a free cascading tag chain of affirmation cooked up by The Scholastic Scribe. Melissa B (profile picture Left) teaches high school journalism, (Mel B? Shome mishtake?).

Melissa’s blog emanates from the legendary ghetto of Haight-Ashbury, so getting this gong feels, in itself, like a thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat at Alice’s restaurant, even without a real VW Microbus, let alone Implements of Dee-struction. The catchy logo comes complete with a quotation from Herbert Gould, elder statesman of the Beat Generation:

Diverting the internal traffic
between the Writer as Angel of Light
and the Writer as Hustler
is the scribbling child in a grown-up body,
wondering if anyone is listening.

Yep. Sounds like me.

Furthermore, what really does it for me is the joy of being awarded this gong by Bosco Peters, whose Spirituality and Liturgy Blog from NZ is one of the most thought provoking and informative reads out there — from the origins of Martinmas to Thomas Merton’s grandparents. Bosco deftly applies real knowledge and creative imagination to core anchor points of Christian praxis, with a seemingly constant stream of helpful and sometimes unique perspectives.

So, I gladly accept this prestigious honour, estabished October 2008,with grateful thanks to Bosco, my family, my parents, my colleagues, and those vital people a gushy Hollywood recipient once named in her acceptance speech, “all the people of the world, just for being themselves.”

In spite of this tagging exercise’s hippy-dippy SF roots, there are rules:

Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.

Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.

Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.

Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!

Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

All that remains, then, is to nominate “five most deserving Bloggy Friends,” or the tag chain fails... So, I suggest, in no particular order, because that would involve envelopes, the following five off my feed list (their latest is always posted in the right hand column)...

• Steve Hayes
  At a time the word “Orthodox” is being increasingly used in ludicrous ways by Churchy politicos who don’t know Orthodoxy from a horse’s, er, bottom, Steve is a real Orthodox Deacon in South Africa. There’s a tremendous depth of experience and breadth of interest here, plus thoughtful reflection from an African perspective. All this spiced with interesting book reviews, and a well developed sense of fun about resources out there, including the notorious Typealyzer, that some people have been wasting hours with this past week.
  
• Tim Norwood
  produces one of the best day-to-day Vicar blogs out there, connecting with people around his ministry. His blog draws you naturally into what he’s doing as Vicar and area dean. I’ve often recommended it to colleagues wondering what use a blog might be in their ministry, and in these days of shared ministry, it’s a good means of sharing life and work, with its joys, frustrations and occasional flashes of inspiration.
  
• David Chillingworth
  was the first bishop blog I got to know — gently humerous, slightly quizzical, personal without ego, I’ve enjoyed getting to know what +David's work is all about, in its various dimensions. Coming from an Irish background, and ministering in Scotland, sometimes gives a particularly interesting twist to his view. +David also deserves a gong for his campaign of billets doux to the housekeeper, pressurizing University of Kent authorities to allow bishops’ spouses to share bedrooms with their fellas at the Lambeth Conference, just like the students do.
  
• Anne Droid
  is a Scottish prison chaplain. Get out of Jail Free rings various bells with me, having engaged in prison ministry myself in the past. She doesn’t duck the real issues, either. I’m struck how some significant dimensions of justice and grace that get hidden away in more genteel spheres of ministry stand out clearly in hers, and it’s a guaranteed good read. It also has an excellent blogroll for those times you just want to thumb round interesting and useful material.
  
• David Keen
  is a Vicar in the West Country, who reflects on a wide variety of issues and ideas around mission, ministry and the Kingdom. He brings together concerns about Kingdom and Ministry in all sorts of interesting ways — feet firmly on the ground, but with penetrating analysis, and a strong sense of justice which has given him a campaigning edge in articulating reactions to the dreadful saga of the SPCK bookshops and the Brewer brothers.
  

Would the Birdman do his Bird in MK?

Woodhill prison, chairing a board to appoint a new second chaplain. Alan Hodgetts and multifaith colelagues are doing great work together. I was also struck by the good humoured commitment of staff to running a safe and non-abusive, occasionally high stress environment.

The staff are magnificent. What’s wrong with our prisons is the fantasy surrounding them. Woodhill is sometimes ludicrously described in the media as “Britain’s own Alcatraz.” Just in case your editor is too dim to know the difference, Alcatraz is on the Left, & Woodhill below.

Perhaps the next phase of our glorious prison building programme could involve digging a replica of San Francisco Bay around it. We could import pelicans, fogs, and greased up Clints swimming up and down dodging the sharks, etc. It would only cost 2 or 3 billion pounds. Oh and we could mount severed heads on the gate — only you'd need crowscares, or the magpies get ’em — if that happens your heads are soon rubbish, and crime soars again. Oh and we could moor rotten hulks in the bay, with broadcast groaning day and night. Then it really would be Britain’s Alcatraz. State of the art in 1934, the real Alcatraz was obsolete by the mid sixties.

Ludicrous fantasy pretty much colours what Fleet Street imagines should go on in prison. Historical experience is that once you have prisons, you fill ’em. The UK government actually plans to build more; and now recidivism is back around its historic 70% rate in the system, this can only increase the amount of crime on the streets long term.

The only silver lining I can offer is the discovery, thanks to Maggi Dawn, of a fantastic blog by Anne Droid (The Reverend), Scottish prison chaplain teasingly called Get out of Jail Free. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. It’s a kind of reality checkpoint amidst all the idiot fantasy about prison. Go read it, particularly her stuff on forgiveness...

Following that star... inside.

Christmas in prison is hard. For this year’s Christmas cards, I played around in Adobe Illustrator after the Carol Service at HMP Grendon at which I spoke.

There’s a great ecumenical chaplaincy team, superbly led by a deeply committed Methodist Chaplain, The Revd Keith Salter. The nativity play included three slightly unconventional Kings, equipped by Major Bert Roper of the Salvation Army with basic but effective devices to keep them locked onto their star:
Grendon was started in 1962 (stone laid by R. A. Butler) as a therapeutic prison, aimed at preventing reoffending by enabling prisoners to face up to the realities of what they have done. The official blurb says:

The Grendon regime is unique, as the therapeutic programme is the core work of the establishment. The therapeutic programme is based on therapeutic community principles, where a dedicated multidisciplinary team of staff work together with prisoners, in an atmosphere where attitudes and expressions, which would not normally be tolerated in prison, are accepted and used to give feedback to prisoners. This therapeutic dialogue leads to prisoner's greater understanding of their usual behaviour. Grendon aims to help prisoners develop more positive relationships, to change how they relate to others and to reduce their risk of re-offending.

There has been constant political pressure on such establishments from Fleet Street, which tends to see them as a soft touch. I don’t actually agree. Which is easier, to engage in painful self exploration in a rigorous “no excuses” environment, or (as the phrase goes) to get your head down and do your bird? It’s obvious which takes more courage. Of course the Grendon regime wouldn’t be right for everyone, but the facts speak for themselves. Two year Reoffending rates in standard UK prisons hover stubbornly around 70-80% — Grendon rates have been reported as low as 7%.

What about the victims? Well, I would say, one of the best things you can do for crime victims is to get crime down so that it doesn’t happen to them again. Sadly, right wing editors are often more interested in populist punitive posturing than serious crime reduction, and few if any of our leaders have the courage to stand up to their fantasies. And so the cycle of crime continues, blighting communities and wrecking people’s lives. Not a very Christmassy concept — but spare a seasonal thought for everyone inside, staff, prisoners, law enforcers, and all victims of crime.

h/t the Therapeutic Community Open Forum Wiki for the wonderful cartoon.