2[nd] Sunday before Advent.  Hollowell & Guilsborough Matins and evensong.
Last week we had the first elections for Police &Crime Commissioners, as you will know, and today is Prison Sunday when we remember the 86,000 people locked up in this country and the 50,000 prison staff who supervise them.  So I thought it would be topical to offer you a few thoughts on the theme of crime, punishment, and Christianity.
Crime and punishment are  two of the most controversial and fraught issues in our society.   1911 OPIUM, GUN AND GIRL.  
" Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime " was Tony Blair's slogan.  I did some research.  In i997, the year he became Prime Minister,  there were 52 new laws that specified a possible term of imprisonment for those who broke them;  ; by 2003, the annual tally was 181 new laws , there were another 174 in 2005 and 133 in 2007. Bizarrely, fishermen who do not ask for permission before fishing on the Lower Esk in Scotland can also be jailed, as can anyone caught importing "an unauthorised veterinary product".    And on we go to the 86,000 I mentioned.  That figure is roughly 4 times greater than the population of Market Harborough.  
Yet we live in a society that where most people do not want to know about prison and I feel that we need to examine our consciences about that.  
The number of people incarcerated in Britain has doubled in the last 15 years to the point where we now have more prisoners than any other European  Union country.  That doubling of the prison population is due to the primarily punitive nature of the judicial system  rather than any significant increase in criminal activity.   

But it is not that we shall find God there it is that God finds us there.  The opportunity to serve God lies there among the prisoners who have been reckoned to be least deserving of any service at all.    GARTREE EXPERIENCE.

This too I know--and wise it were
  If each could know the same--
That every prison that men build
  Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
  How men their brothers maim.

In the New Testament, freedom more often refers to an interior
moral and spiritual freedom which the Christian gospel brings, a freedom from demons and despair, from sin and selfishness, from guilt and greed. 

The full experience of God's freedom must embrace both external and internal dimensions, although each can be experienced separately and neither is dependent on the other.

What this means in practice is that those behind bars can still experience genuine moral and spiritual liberation even while they remain externally in prison. This is the powerful idea that lies at the heart of the ministry of Prison Fellowship. 

This is where he Sycamore Tree course comes in.  /////////But the same
Lord who brings interior freedom also desires to see prisoners set free from their physical incarceration. This doesn't mean Christian prisoners should be encouraged to escape! But it does mean their fellow believers should work hard for their eventual
release, and support them through their post-release adjustment.

Another element of a Christian position on prisons must be a commitment to the reintegration of released prisoners .

Concern for those behind bars must be accompanied by generosity towards them when they have finished their sentences and face the struggle of re-entering an often suspicious and hostile community.

People often defend prisons as a means by which offenders can "pay their debt to society". But the metaphor fails. Not only does society foot the bill for imprisonment but ex-prisoners are never really discharged of their debt. They bear a seemingly ineradicable stigma of having been inside. In the eyes of society, a period of imprisonment serves to establish criminality as "an indelible  attribute".

We as Prisoners of Christ can play our part in a practical way to try to dispel that attitude,  by for example,  supporting Prison Fellowship and its programmes. 

Churchill quote. 

"The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of civilization in any country.   A calm and dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against the state, and even of convicted criminals against the state, a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment,  a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment,  tireless efforts towards the discovery of regenerating processes,  and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure,  if you can only find it, in the heart of every man  -  these are the things which in the treatment of crime and criminals mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue in it."

[Winston Churchill,  as Home Secretary, to the House of Commons, 20th July, 1910.]



