The tickets for tours of Kingston Penitentiary were gone in a flash. The Correctional Service of Canada offered a three-week window of opportunity for visitors between the departure of the last of the prisoners and the official closure of the one hundred and seventy-eight year-old institution.. The United Way sold the tickets immediately and when more tickets were made available they were gobbled up as well. We were disappointed because Ruth has never been in, even though for four months she saw me head off for KP five days a week as a chaplain intern. It was an imposing, scary, life-altering place to do ministry training and I too wanted the opportunity to get back in there.
Little wonder that Alcatraz of the North has piqued such interest. Opened in 1835 Kingston Pen still had a Dicksenian quality about it in certain areas. In fact, Charles Dickens visited KP while in North America and deemed it a fine institution. This was in the time when children as young as eight were inmates and received the lash for minor infractions. In the earliest days prisoners were not allowed to speak with one another or look at others. Even during my time there in 1979 solitary confinement deserved to be called The Hole.
What will happen with Kingston Penitentiary? Will it become a sort of theme park? It could be very successful because so many high profile Bad Guys spent time there.
As all the news and interviews floated around this week I spent time with a guy who has spent most of his life from his early teens to his mid-forties in reform schools, jails and prisons across the country He has been on the street for nearly two years but needed someone to talk to because re-entry, including finding work, has been really tough. He admits that the regimented life of prison is what he knows, and he really doesn't know where life will lead him next.
As I spoke with him I was struck by his intelligence, his honesty, and his vulnerability. He reminded me of many of the men I met during my summer at KP. After that experience I often thought "there but for the grace of God..." The correctional system in Canada isn't really set up to correct anything. It long ago gave up on rehabilitation. There was a time when you could get a trade in prison. Not anymore. The federal government announced recently that it was going to take more of the meagre money inmates earn inside for "room and board." Our system is being remade for "tough on crime" punishment, not developing different patterns for life.
What are your thoughts about KP? Have you given much thought about what happens in our jails and prisons? Does God hang out in prisons?
5 comments:
My older brother visits the pen often he works for the John Howard Society in Toronto and he comes out frequently to see folks about to get out or to deal with problems that arise. He deals with the lets jusy say the population in Kingston that is in protective custdoy .. the lowest of the low as they are deemed. my conversations with him really mirror what you say David the prison is there for a reason but are we rehabilitating prisoners or just making them bitter better criminals. God is in the prison with all the chaplins and the folks who try to make a difference there ...
I suspect God tries very hard to hang out in prisons - but I doubt if we would recognize God there ....
I should clarify that ... the God we see at work in prisons probably looks nothing like the God we meet and greet on Sundays in a church ... because the people are so different, and we restrict God to a middle class concept of what it means to "live a good life"
amen judy that is so right
A young teen shared her "FutureQuest" experience this morning with our congregation and told us that the seminar she attended that had lasting impact was called "God in Prison" facilitated by a prison chaplain...and it has me curious to talk more with her about it....
We talk of forgiveness often from a faith perspective....but prisoners don't come up often in these discussions maybe because of our fears.....and maybe because they are locked away.....
I think God definitely hangs out in prison and I do wonder what truly goes on in individuals and in community while " doing time" ....a term that makes the days and hours sound wasted, and without much hope.l
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