Soul-searching in the Scrubs

BRITISH prisons differ greatly in security category, cell capacity and facilities. lt is impossible to generalise about Catholics in prison. Which prisoners? The unconvicted remands or convicted shortterm, long-term or lifer prisoners? Which prisons? Old or new, top security, medium or low security? Prisoners beginning or ending their sentences?
Some big city prisons have a full-time Catholic chaplain and assistant and support from neighbouring parishes, resulting in much religious activity. The chaplain of Wormwood Scrubs in West London, Fr John Fitzpatrick, a veteran of Latin America, has a full-time assistant in Sr Agnes Hunt and support from Fr Tony Brunning of Southall and other London priests. Sunday Eucharist is a packed affair and is supported by a choir of prisoners led and trained by teacher and guitarist, Marie Hogg, and by young Westminster Missionaries with Sr Madeleine. Free copies of the Catholic Herald and Universe are available.
Whilst Fr John takes the Saturday morning Service of Reconciliation in the church, Srs Shikha and Crystal of Mother Teresa's order based in Southall visit long-term "D" wing and the Hospital and on Saturday afternoons Srs Agnes and Mary lead a prayer group in the boardroom on "D" wing. On weekdays, Communion is available and lifers and longtermers in cell 1/68 on "D" wing.
Individual "D" wing prisoners have prayed the Divine Office and Sr Maureen Nyhan of the Peckham Capuchin Secular Franciscan Order has not feared to coach new members from among "D" inmates. On Wednesday evenings there is a discussion group in the Church, often ecumenical, and attended by Westminster Missionaries. It is rounded off with coffee.
In October, Fr Jim McManus directed a retreat in Wormwood Scrubs. The previous chaplain, Fr Gerry Ennis, must take some credit for building up this wealth of religious facilities and the Scrubs authorities (unlike some others) must get a mention for accommodating it in a top security regime.
However, many souls are not reached in crowded Scrubs and there is much suffering and anguish there, as shown by the acts of self-mutilation and suicide born of despair.
Many isolated countryside prisons, including top-security Gartree in Leicestershire and Long Lartin in Worcestershire, where many prisoners serve life sentences with recommendations of 20 to 30 years, have only an overstretched, part-time Catholic Chaplain and a poorly
attended weekly Eucharist on a weekday, often clashing with video films, gymnasium and association periods. There tend to be no religious weeklies available and few religious books.
It is not that part-time chaplains fail in their task, rather it is that the task set them is impossible for unsupported individuals who also have to minister to widely scattered village parishes in dioceses short of priests. Such isolated security regimes are less flexible to mere part-time chaplains who often find access to individual prisoners difficult.
The traditional prison -suspicions that chaplains are informers and homosexuals, and that religious prisoners are weak or soft, are strongest in the isolated security prison's and the fact that chaplains sign the authorities' Official Secrets' Act and keep rudimentary files on their flock and contribute views to review boards tend to militate against religion. This leaves a vacuum only 'partially filled by videos, gym, record players, drugs, porn, homosexuality and atheism.
Problems arising from the sexual and emotional sterility imposed on long-term prisoners in particular (and their spouses) are completely ignored by policy makers and regimes, and the immorality of Conservative Home Secretaries' neutering of the Parole Board and imposition of 20 year minimums on many life sentence prisoners for political reasons, ignoring individual rehabilitation achieved much earlier, has caused no Christian outcry.
The deliberate creation of a special category of no-hope lifer prisoners, sacrificial victims to Conservative voting opinion, and the accompanying extension of life sentence terms generally, regardless of the progress of individual prisoner, is undermining any stablity in top security prisons.
Ecumenism is reinforced by the fact that all British prisons are required by statute to have full-time Church of England chaplains and these fill in for temporarily unavailable Catholic Chaplains and others. 1 have often been helped and advised by Anglican chaplaincies dining 10 years in English prisons, most notably by Church Army Sr Ranson in Brixton Prison and by the ministers in Wakefield Prison.
In Blundeston Prison, near Lowestoft, part-timer Fr Tony Sketch's weekly Eucharist on Saturday mornings has organ music provided by Mrs Cook, a Methodist, and when Bishop Clarke recently visited to confirm an inmate, the Anglican and Methodist ministers (and prisoners) attended and stayed for coffee.
The fact that Prisoners1 Sunday will have virtually no impact on Britain's 45,000 prisoners (or on its 50 million citizens) does not mean that its Christ-values are failed, but that they are insufficiently tried and supported, not least in the Churches.
Shane O'Doherty was sentenced to life imprisonment In May 1975 for his part in an IRA letter bombing campaign.