I am sure many of you have heard or watched on television the news about a prisoner from Dhurringile being released each Saturday to play football.
The fellow in question is a local from around here, not that it matters. I thought to myself, here we go again, the media jumping on anything where prisoners are able to be involved (dare not say enjoy) in the local community.
This is another incident where pressure is put on the Justice System for being too lenient. And as we see here, the politicians getting involved and asking questions, why? Helping prisoners never wins votes.
I think we will never get anywhere while people think that prison is a place of punishment. The most important thing that a prisoner forfeits, as for anyone, is their freedom. They also have a sense of loss of dignity and individuality. They can become numbers, they are all dressed the same. They lose contact with the outside world, family and friends. Surely this is enough so let us rehabilitate the person.
They say 99% of all prisoners return to society. If this is so, then they need help to make this re-entry and be able to cope with it. Let us give them the necessary help, environment, counselling, education, and health services so whatever was lacking in the past can be overcome, or understood and treated. If a released prisoner comes to live next door, I for one would want to know that we as a society, a government and a justice system have done all we can to help this man adjust with the changes etc., job opportunities for his future.
I understand that there is grief, a sense of loss and hurt for the victim’s family, as in this case, but somewhere there needs to be the forgiveness because until we do it will haunt us like a cancer.
It was heart warming to hear on the news this morning that Andrew Brayshaw has forgiven Andrew Gaff over the incident on the football field last weekend. He says that Andrew (Gaff) has gone through enough already and everyone needs to move on in their lives and forget the incident. If only we could all do the same in the circumstances of our lives.
I was sent an email with a link to the conversation on 3AW with the Commissioner for Corrections Emma Cassar. I was impressed with her answers and the way she handled the interview. The way the questions were put to her made me think that here is someone who thinks that prisoners are not entitled to any privileges whether football or being released to attend a family funeral, but are in prison to be punished. As I said before while we have this mindset it will be difficult for Emma Cassar, the Parole Board, the prison personal, me and volunteers to achieve our end goal to help these men back into society.
How sad, I have just received an email telling me that all programs involving the prisoners in ‘outside’ activities are cancelled until after an inquiry.
This means that the work gangs will not be doing community work, helping farmers remove burnt out fences, chatting to the elderly in nursing homes, helping the disabled, visiting our churches for Mass each Sunday. People love to have the prisoners visiting in any capacity whatever. Our people have the opportunity to mix with them and to share some little ‘treats’ with them that they cannot enjoy in prison. This uninformed reaction by many, particularly the government, has had enormous impact on the good that the prisoners were doing and the good-will shared between the prisoners and the community in general. Let the media talk to them!
Jesus was right “I was in prison and you didn’t come to see me!’.
Fr Michael Morley
