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Chapter 1
Time to Meet the Incarcerated
In this chapter, you will meet four young men who typify the incarcerated men who make their way to a chaplain for counseling. One individual I counseled for about five months before his release, another for eight months, another six months, and the other approximately five months. The last was an ongoing counseling relationship. These individuals were incarcerated at Joliet. Two of these inmates were assigned to the protective custody (PC) gallery. One of the inmates was in SEG, then general population, and eventually placed back in SEG. The other inmate was in SEG the entire period I worked with him.
The format I will be using for these case studies will be the one illustrated in Shared Wisdom: A Guide to Case Study Reflection in Ministry. The format of these four case studies will be as follows:
- Background: Information to set the event in context
- Description: What happened and what I did as a chaplain
- Analysis: Identification of issues
- Evaluation: Estimation of my effectiveness in situation1
The case studies will be preceded by a general introduction that reflects the ethos in which these four incarcerated men lived. The case studies will be followed by a theological reflection on the issues of guilt, shame, reconciliation, and forgiveness.
Introduction
As clergy or as a religious volunteer, our role in pastoral counseling is to develop a ministry that is therapeutic and to liberate the individual from the oppression he or she is experiencing. This is achieved by joining the individuals together in conversation and contact to confront the overwhelming issues. This relationship must be grounded on the concerns centered on the process of caring and the investigation of alternatives to the issues that are causing the dilemma. These issues need to be addressed within the context of beliefs found within the faith and traditions that support the culture of the individual or, in the case of an inmate, the particular prison ethos.
The function of a chaplain, or religious volunteers, within the context of a prison ethos, is to liberate the incarcerated from the emotional/cultural prison to which they have confined themselves through the process of prisonization. Prisonization is defined as taking on the folkways, mores, customs, and general culture of a particular penitentiary. This also is the process by which an incarcerated individual’s self-esteem begins to break down. The feelings that reflect this condition are loneliness, boredom, less caring, less sensitivity, and loss of control.
One needs not only to have the capacity to understand the prison ethos but to be able to feel it as real before one can counsel in it. In other words, clergy need to empathetically feel the fear, guilt, shame, loneliness, and abandonment that permeate the ethos. One needs to feel an inmate’s feelings not through projection but through what Augsburger calls compassionate imagination. In order to feel empathy one must purposely engage the process since it is not part of sympathy, which is an unconscious response to a situation or a person’s feelings. This is critical to a prison ministry, especially in a maximum-security facility. A vital component of this process is interpathic caring.
Interpathic caring requires that one feels and thinks with the other person and crosses over into his or her world of assumptions, values, and beliefs and, for the moment, takes them on as his or her own. In the process, the pastoral counselor is imaging and using a foreign belief to define the circumstances the inmate is depicting.
Interpathic empathy takes one well beyond the limits and offers a “grace that draws no lines, refuses limits, claims universal humanness as sufficient foundation for joining another in a unique world experience.”2
Certainly part of this process is presence. Paul Hessert, in his book Christ & the End of Meaning, defines it as follows:
Christianity’s primary concern, however, is not with God as concept or idea but as presence. … Although the concept of God arises out of the experience of order and focuses on design and efficacy, confrontation with God comes as an interruption in order … it may be that people can also be helped to recognize Presence and to “name” it. But only as a thought can Presence be universal in actuality Presence is momentary and specific to place.3
In other words, presence is paramount to a prison ministry. “Being and doing are inseparable. It is being which authenticates doing, doing which demonstrates authentic being.”4
Mutuality is a key component of prison ministry. Mutuality allows the chaplain to see the inmate’s inner world while still maintaining his or her own world perspective. It is critical to the relationship that the worlds do not become indistinguishable from each other, and preserve their own distinct identity; but they do become mutual.
A prison chaplain is initially seen by the incarcerated, or oppressed, as part of the administration, or the oppressor, so several things need to happen in order for the interpathic process to occur on the part of the chaplain. These changes are as follows:
- The incarcerated will work toward liberation from the prisonization process.
- The chaplain can play a participatory role in the liberation from the prisonization process.
- Chaplains need to be advocates for the incarcerated on issues generated by the administration and prisonization.
- The administration, the incarcerated, and the chaplain need to understand what the individual lives and histories have contributed to the prison ethos.5
If this movement occurs a genuine dialogue can be developed that should contain the following five components:
- Each participant must come to the discussion with sincerity and honesty.
- Each participant must accept the other. This brings the same level of sincerity and honesty to the discussion.
- Each participant must portray who he or she really is.
- Each participant needs to come to the discussion without any inflexible assumptions.
- Trust is the basis of the discussion. This trust is built slowly through the dialogue.6
Inmate #1, Inmate #2, Inmate #3, and Inmate #4 mirror the same prison ethos, Joliet Correctional Center. Each of these men were shaped differently both by the culture they came from before being incarcerated and by the prisonization process they experienced during their incarceration.
These inmates, being in PC and SEG, reflect the second need as outlined by Maslow: the need for safety. The prison ethos as defined by their situation, being in PC and SEG, contained a fair amount of brutality and aggression for them.
Every culture, or ethos, has four primary components.
- Self-affirmation: Understands own worth
- Relatedness: To be connected to others and to be needed
- Individuation: Uniqueness from other individuals
- Growth: Movement from helplessness to maturity to defenselessness of old age7
For the incarcerated in the prison ethos, the growth, I believe, is not only from helplessness but also from defenselessness into liberation from the oppression of the prison ethos.
Ernest Becker in his work The Birth and Death of Meaning defines self-esteem by stating:
A man’s “Me” is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only the body and his mind, but his clothes and house, … ancestors and friends…. In other words, the human animal can be symbolically located wherever he feels part of him really exists or belongs.8
This issue of self-esteem is critical to the discussion of these four incarcerated young men.
Part of the self-esteem issue for these men was that by choosing the protection from perceived dangers of PC or confinement in SEG, they were paying a price by limiting their experience to inmates in similar situations, thus restricting the prison ethos to an even smaller sampling of what they perceived as reality. Being housed in PC or SEG limited movement, recreation, education, ability to make phone calls, use of the prison library to research their cases for appeal, special programs in the chapel, and personal contact with friends/family or a potential friend in the general population. Alfred Adler professed “that the basic law of human life is the urge to self-esteem.”9 In the case of the four inmates who will be discussed, that is exactly what was happening; the attempt was to rebuild and reinforce their self-images. The pressure to evolve a workable self-esteem became critical to these young men since the
qualitative feeling of self-value is the basic predicate for human action, precisely because it epitomizes the whole development of the ego…. This cannot be overemphasized. It permits us to take the final step in understanding the experience of socialization.10
It is pivotal to recognize that “to lose self-esteem is to lose nourishment for a whole, pulsating, organismic life…. In a word, we must understand that self-esteem is vital.”11 One of the functions of culture or ethos is to provide variations to foster self-esteem.12
Part of the self-esteem process is the establishment of individuality. This refers to the evolution of variations with the person’s self-esteem that makes him or her flexible and adaptable in various situations. However, the prison ethos and incarceration, let alone confinement in PC or SEG, has a direct effect on the individual’s ability to be flexible and adaptable to the surrounding environment.
The inmates discussed in this section defined responsibility on a situation-centered orientation. These men saw themselves and the ethos as inseparable in their interpretation of problems and viewed the prison ethos as overwhelming. Augsburger’s discussion of the “Control and Responsibility Context” is extremely helpful when he broke the point of control and the point of responsibility out into a grid. The four quadrants of this grid are
- Internal Control-External Responsibility,
- External Control-External Responsibility,
- External Control-Internal Responsibility, and
- Internal Control-Internal Responsibility.
Values are also important as to how the incarcerated see themselves within the prison ethos. Values can reflect where individuals have set “their” standards but also define where the culture or ethos has located its standards.13 All four inmates reflect the following three values, which also reflect the general prison ethos’ standard values as well.
- Success is the objective. In a prison setting this involves reputation, safety, and resources.
- The ability to take care of oneself is respected.
- Youth is dominating.14
At this point it is appropriate to introduce the Stages of Incarceration, which are based on Kübler-Ross’s work On Death and Dying. The Stages of Incarceration are the means by which the dehumanization process takes place within the incarcerated individual.
Stages of Incarceration
- Denial: This stage begins the moment the transfer bus from county jail enters the sally port of the prison where the reception center is located. The outer steel door closes behind it and the front steel door opens to the prison yard. Denial will last between one and three years for those incarcerated in a maximum-security type of facility. This stage is consumed with blaming others for incarceration, dreaming of the “free world,” filing appeals, or dwelling on a problem with a loved one or significant other.
- Anger: This stage occurs when the incarcerated comprehends the reality of his confinement to a prison, as it can no longer be denied. The incarcerated is angry with everyone—other inmates, family, correctional staff, the world, and, more often than not, God.
- Bargaining: This is the stage in which the incarcerated attempts to make deals with God and anyone else who will listen. The incarcerated will promise to change his ways for the favor he seeks. An example of the favor would be a job assignment, school to earn good time, Honor Dorm, extended visit, or transfer to another facility.
- Depression: When the reality sets in that neither denial, anger, nor bargaining will work, depression engulfs the life of the incarcerated. Prisoners begin to feel the stresses of their lost freedom and their separation from family and friends. At this point shame, hopelessness, guilt, and despair contribute to the pain of imprisonment. These feelings further accelerate the prisonization process. At this juncture, the incarcerated begins to withdraw from the outside world; the rejection syndrome takes over. Often the incarcerated begins the rejection syndrome by refusing to see visitors. He also spends most of his time in his cell asleep. Another contributing factor to the depression is the extensive amount of time the incarcerated has and the fact that depression immobilizes him from finding activities to occupy his time and thoughts. Frequent visits by the chaplain to the cell blocks are crucial in this stage to help move such individuals on to the next stage of this process.
- Acceptance: This is the final stage of incarceration. Finally, at this point the incarcerated accepts his confinement for the length of his sentence. The appeals have all failed, he may have become distant to his family and friends in the “free world,” divorce may have taken place, he has bought into the prisonization process and, in many respects, has also bought into the mannerism of victimization. This is also the stage where the incarcerated begins to cooperate actively with prison staff and becomes involved in programs such as a job, education, peer counseling, or chapel.15
These Stages of Incarceration can be repeated if anything provokes a return to an earlier stage such as denial, anger, or depression. The type of an occurrence that might cause this regression might be victimization, loss of a family member (especially a child), loss of a privilege such as Honor Dorm or a good job in industry, sexual aggression, or a transfer to another facility.16 A transfer becomes a marked problem when an inmate with a good-paying industry job transfers from a maxi...
