Violence Behind Bars Is Inescapable & Traumatizing…

Blameless and Forever Free Ministries understands that as we sojourn with our Beautiful Jesus back inside our state prison facilities; with society’s obsession with punishment, our job is to also help society understand that cages and violent justice only perpetuates violence and IT WILL NOT break the cycle of evil and/or deliver any healing.

If today’s offender will be tomorrow’s neighbor, prison may be necessary for a time, but it is not a solution to evil and crime.

God has showered us with heaven’s rain seeing goodness overcome evil through forgiveness as relationships between victims, offenders, families and staff have become reconciled and restored.

But…

If justice is accomplished by solely locking a person up in prison as punishment, how can we expect that this will somehow accomplish a betterment of a person who has done evil or even make our communities safer?

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Incarcerated beloveds rarely return back to society as a morally better person. They usually re-enter society more broken and damaged than before incarceration.

Regardless of the conditions of the confinement or adaptation of incarceration to institutionalized life, our prisons DO NOT make “bad” men and women “good.” Prisons do not overcome or erase the evil that lurks within the human heart. That takes the power of healing, transformation and redemption.

With our state prisons being in lockdown this year due to COVID-19 leading to isolation, suffering in silence, Blameless understands the importance of shifting the narrative by bringing awareness to what our incarcerated go through. This includes the violence they’re subjected to at times, how and why prisons are factories of racism, the mundane nature of it all, along with sharing that there’s not an easy six-to-eight-week course program that one can take that will deliver healing results.

It’s going to take extra grace and commitment establishing relationships, finding the need behind the need, what triggers their behaviors for accountability purposes, and start pulling down layer by layer of the traumas associated with their lives and crimes.

Our incarcerated lives matter and they have value. They are more than worth the time and commitment needed for healing and restoration.

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Every life matters…

This article and new report by Prison Policy is too important not to start off with taking bits and pieces for a good week to talk about. This is prison life.

We have had increased suicides. We have had significant rioting and killings. Suffering in silence increases mental illness and rage. They have suffered sickness and death due to COVID. The anxiety is real and it’s powerful. It’s dark and it will slay you if you’re not careful.

The plague of violence behind bars is often overlooked and ignored. And when it does receive public attention, a discussion of the effects on those forced to witness this violence is almost always absent.

Most people in prison want to return home to their families without incident, and without adding time to their sentences by participating in further violence. But during their incarceration, many people become unwilling witnesses to horrific and traumatizing violence, as brought to light in a February publication by Professors Meghan Novisky and Robert Peralta.

Participants reported witnessing frequent, brutal acts of violence, including stabbings, attacks with scalding substances, multi-person assaults, and murder. They also described the lingering effects of witnessing these traumatic events, including hypervigilance, anxiety, depression, and avoidance.

We can never lose sight of the fact that “these traumatic events affect health and social function in ways that are not so different from the aftereffects faced by survivors of direct violence and war.”

We pray after reading this study from Prison Policy, you understand a glimpse of what our incarcerated beloveds are subjected to. This way maybe you’ll become a recipient of such incredible and amazing grace yourself that you respond to offenders beyond a “tit for tat” and “eye for eye” justice. Click here…

Until next time…