Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 15, 1994 TAG: 9412160009
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: B9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROY RIVENBURG LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Deposed Panamanian president (and drug smuggler) Manuel Noriega encounters Jesus while doing time in Miami.
And Wall Street wizard Ivan Boesky reportedly grows a rabbinical beard and studies Judaism behind bars.
Around the nation, jailhouse solitude seems to have a way of stirring inmate introspection and spiritual interest. In Los Angeles, O.J. Simpson is said to be reading the Bible. In other cities, everyone from convicted cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer to Manson Family member Tex Watson has joined the cavalcade of converts.
Is it sincere remorse or cynical spin control? Prison religion presents a baffling juxtaposition of good and evil, one that has inspired wonder, skepticism - and a sometimes strange array of ministries.
In addition to representatives of such established deities as Allah and Christ, inmates have followed maharishis, voodoo practitioners, Scientologists, medicine men and the infamous Church of the New Song, a prison-based faith whose sacraments were sherry and steak.
Convicts have also been known to profess an interest in Scripture - occasionally because contraband has been hidden in hollowed-out Bibles, but more often because of genuine spiritual longing.
``People are too quick to assume that jailhouse converts [are faking],'' says University of California, Los Angeles law professor John Shepard Wiley Jr., a former federal prosecutor. ``Actually, prison is the kind of environment that might well prompt a conversion. It's a shattering ... monkish existence ... a complete change in your life. Sure, some turn to the worst instincts. But I don't think it's implausible that some turn to the best.''
Indeed, for many inmates, God offers the only real shot at secular as well as spiritual salvation, says Whitney Kuniholm, executive vice president for Prison Fellowship USA, the Christian ministry founded by Watergate ex-con Charles Colson:
``You can have job programs, literacy programs, drug programs and educational programs, but unless something changes on the inside [of a person], that stuff isn't going to make a difference.''
Soul-searching inmates turn to religion for several reasons.
``The initial factors usually have little to do with spirituality,'' says Don Smarto, a former probation officer and assistant warden who now directs the Institute for Prison Ministries at the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Ill. ``On a psychological level, they're bargaining ... praying for a miraculous intervention [to get them out of jail].''
They might also be enamored with the tranquillity of penitentiary chapels, the doughnuts and cookies offered by some prison ministries or the chance to mingle with women volunteers.
A 1992 Rutgers University study concluded that prisoners seek God to cope with ``depression, guilt and self-contempt'' and to gain ``a sense of self-control, an ability to restrain anger.''
They don't necessarily do it with Christianity, however.
In the West, American Indian spiritual leaders conduct sweat lodge ceremonies for prisoners. Incarcerated converts to Judaism celebrate bar mitzvahs. And among black prisoners, recruits to Islam number about 30,000 a year, according to research by the American Muslim Council.
(Christian conversion experiences run as high as 150,000 a year among the nation's 1 million inmates, but most ``commitments to Christ'' don't last and some prisoners convert several times annually, says Rutgers criminal justice professor Todd Clear.)
Today, the God Squad continues to grow. Protestants alone operate at least 2,000 prison ministry groups nationwide, Smarto says.
The results, however, are unclear.
A 1990 Prison Fellowship study of 360 ex-cons, for example, found that 40 percent of those who were heavily involved in Fellowship programs in jail committed new crimes after release (compared with 51 percent of the non-Christian group).
That's more impressive than it might sound, says Rutgers professor Clear, but the study is flawed and additional analyses are needed. If similar numbers can be produced, he says, it's encouraging news: ``If a [prison job-skills] program had those results, I would be quite enthusiastic about it. Changing human behavior isn't an easy enterprise.''
Converts to Islam also have a tough time. Black Muslims are actually somewhat more likely to return to prison than other ex-inmates, says researcher Fareed Nu'man of the American Muslim Council. In contrast, 20 years ago, Muslims hardly ever went back to jail, he says. But there were more extensive support programs then (they have since vanished).
And outside, it's easy to forget about God.
Prisoners are just like anybody else, says the Rev. Nick Ristad, president of the 125-member Associated Chaplains in California State Service. ``How many people go to church when they have a death in the family or a crisis?'' he asks. ``And how many stay there once the crisis is over?''
That's one reason Mormons, for one, won't baptize inmates until they're out of jail and finished with probation.
The best test of faith, everyone seems to agree, is time.
Understandably, judges and parole boards rarely put much faith in convict conversions, experts say.
``There's such an incentive to fabricate that it's difficult to be convincing,'' UCLA's Wiley explains. ``The problem is that the best evidence of a genuine conversion comes after a person leaves prison.''
Overall, the percentage of inmates whose conversions stick is probably ``closer to 5 percent than 50 percent,'' says Clear, although he notes that no precise figures are available.
Ultimately, Kuniholm says, it's impossible to tell when a jailhouse conversion is real: ``Only God knows what's going on in a person's heart.''
by CNB