Corrections_Today_Winter_2024-2025_Vol.86_No.4

News&Views

CORRECTIONAL CHAPLAIN PERSPECTIVES

Challenge for chaplains & churches: Develop discipleship ministries for the incarcerated context By Rev. Dr. Sylvia Moseley T his article attempts to challenge prison ministry methodology as well as Chaplains oversight to provide brown, and white citizens in their jails and prisons, which is a 500% increase over the last 40 years. 3 The increase reflects a change in policies and sentencing laws, rather than a rapid rise in crime rates.

churches consisting of well-meaning members, ministers, and pastors enthusiastically conduct worship services in the prisons, many times concluding with an exhortation to the incarcerated persons (IP), to confess Christ. Many seeking change in their lives have answered the call repeatedly, thinking they must be doing something wrong be cause the change does not come, or the change does not last. However,

faith based trauma informed bible studies, worship experiences, and discipleship/mentoring programs. It is the position of this author these services challenge and may change criminogenic thinking and behaviors many incarcerated individuals have incorporated into their worldview. This worldview contributes to the phenomena iden tified and named by the Children’s Defense Fund as “America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline.” 1 The Children’s Defense Fund observed that birth environments, childhood traumas, and family dynamics have a high probability of placing children on a trajectory to spend their lives cy cling through the pipeline to prison. Sunflower, Mississippi, and Cincin nati, Ohio were two cities chosen to evaluate in preparing the report. The alarming findings these two cit ies revealed in 2007 ignited difficult conversations about poverty, race, equality, and the prison pipeline. 2 To date, America incarcerates ap proximately 2.2 million poor black,

After almost fifty years of buildup, due to prison reforms, the twenty first century has seen a twenty-five percent decrease nationally in the prison population. 4 In address ing the issues, ministries in many

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Corrections Today | Winter 2024-2025

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