"Joseph House," a home of redemption after prison.Kolbe Prison Ministries, finding Christ in prisonFrom April to June, the Spanish Bishops' Conference is celebrating the "The Church in twelve weeks"The company's "hundreds of thousands of people who are behind each of the figures" in its annual report.
"Education", "Elderly", "Mental Health" or "Migrants" are some of the areas to which the Church is giving visibility during these twelve weeks.
Another of the realities in which the focus has been placed is the Penitentiary Pastoral. On this occasion, in Omnes we have interviewed Jaume Alemany, delegate of the Prison Pastoral of Mallorca, who has spoken to us about the work of accompaniment to the prisonersThe difficulties they encounter upon release from prison and reintegration programs.
-What difficulties do prisoners encounter upon release?
The main difficulty is to get back in touch with reality, a reality that has changed, depending on how long they have been in prison. The truth is that the world changes very quickly and in prison time passes very slowly. There is also the difficulty of contacting the family, some of them have broken relations with them, in other cases the crime had to do with the family and therefore they have difficulties to establish contact.
Of course, there is the difficulty of finding work; having been in prison is not exactly a merit. In addition, currently a very important problem for those who do not have a family is access to housing. It is also the case that inmates, when they leave prison after serving a sentence, receive a release benefit, but they do not start receiving it until two months after their release. So, the first days, the first month, they have a very hard time if they do not have some contact to help them on the street. Basically, we could summarize that the difficulty they encounter is to resume a normalized life, because they have lived in prison, in a bubble that has distanced them from reality.
-What does the process of accompaniment of the Prison Pastoral of Mallorca consist of?
It consists precisely in establishing a more or less close contact with the inmates, with those who allow themselves to be accompanied, while they are serving their sentence in the same penitentiary center. This is where a relationship of trust is established, because a volunteer does not go there to earn a living, nor to fulfill any obligation, but rather to give part of his or her time and energy to help, to collaborate, to accompany processes of personal growth. They trust the volunteer, not so much the professionals who, however competent they may be, for the inmates represent an institution, and they distrust it. The professionals, after all, judge them, they have to vote in the Treatment Board and can deny or facilitate a permit, access to the third grade... All this makes many distrust them, but with the volunteer it is easier to establish a relationship of trust.
Those who have undergone a process of accompaniment in the center, then during their furloughs they enjoy our tutelage in reception apartments. In addition, when the time comes for them to be released, we have some places to accompany them in the process of reintegration into the labor market, and we also accompany them in something as simple as updating their documentation that has expired, and in so many other things that they need to be accompanied in the street.
-What role do Prison Ministry volunteers have in this process?
The volunteer occupies the role of companion. We are very clear that the volunteer does not replace what the inmate has and can do by himself. But, yes, the volunteer guides him, accompanies him, sustains him in moments of depression, of discouragement when the first euphoria of leaving prison has passed. Because usually after that comes a period of discouragement, when they realize that life is not as easy as they imagined, that things do not turn out as they had planned. And the volunteer in this sense is a support.
-Can you tell us Kike's story?
I would say that Kike's story is the story of a person who wanted to get out of the pit, who wanted to overcome, not without many difficulties. But he chose to grow, to accept an accompaniment, and that has earned him our welcome not only in the furloughs, but now when he has really come out. In fact, he has earned a place not in the reintegration apartments, which we have as a prison ministry, but in a reception center that we opened in our parish, Our Lady of Montserrat, which is for people who find themselves on the street with an eviction, or recently arrived migrants, who have no recourse. In our temporary care center, we assure them five, six or seven months to land. Kike has been able to get a place in this center. This has helped him a lot, and he also accepts a very strict accompaniment in very elementary matters of habits that we consider normal but that have been forgotten in prison, such as cleanliness, vocabulary, showing up for an interview with a good appearance, quitting smoking, among other things. I believe that he is now well on the way to being able to start a more personalized stage, perhaps with less accompaniment, although he always knows that we are with him to help him when necessary.
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-What challenges do you face in this regard?
The system is designed precisely for the purpose of reintegrating people into society when they leave prison after serving a prison sentence. What happens is that this good wish and the penitentiary regulations, which are, according to those who understand this, very advanced and progressive, and which respect people's dignity, in many cases, I would say in a great majority of cases, do not go beyond a wish, a good wish. Then there is a lack of resources, and other problems mean that it is not always easy. Exceptionally, for some, prison has meant a change and the impulse to start a new life. Of course, there are some who say: "I am alive thanks to prison". There are some programs to which a minority are admitted, such as the TUs, the Educational Therapeutic Units, in which particularly motivated professionals work in a very involved way and achieve results. But they are the fewest.
For the majority, prison is a system that not only fails to integrate and educate them, but also diseducates them. There they do not have to make any decisions, they are given everything done, they are not aware of the problems experienced on the street, of access to housing, of poorly paid work. Although prison life is hard, in a certain sense it is very easy to become comfortable and succumb to the temptation to wait for time to pass. I think this negatively affects people's dignity and, when they get out on the street, it's hard to convince them that they have skills they haven't developed in prison. Even so, it is encouraging to see how some (we are always talking about minorities) have made a change in their lives. After leaving prison, they have put a stop to alcohol and drug use. And they have started a new process. This encourages and makes that, even if it is a minority, it is worthwhile to dedicate all the efforts needed.
Finally, I would say that the utopia, if I may say so, to which the Prison Pastoral of Mallorca has adhered, is to propose what in Europe is called "detention houses". We have adhered to a European organization, "The Prison Pastoral".Rescaled"The proposal is to personalize treatment much more, bringing together inmates with a similar profile and no more than thirty or fifty people at most, in order to avoid overcrowding and to be able to provide much more personalized follow-up. The proposal consists of personalizing treatment much more, bringing together inmates with a similar profile of no more than thirty or fifty people at most, in order to avoid overcrowding and to be able to carry out a much more personalized follow-up. In Spain we are the only entity participating in this movement. We have been in Brussels, now we are awaiting a meeting in Prague, and we also plan to organize a meeting in Palma de Mallorca, to which we will invite all the groups, entities, associations and of course prison pastorals of all the dioceses, to present this proposal. It will not be something immediate, this cannot be achieved from one day to the next, but we can open this perspective of a much more personalized system, much more transparent, to ensure that these centers are not so much centers of confinement as centers of education.
I would also point out, with the experience of almost 30 years in prison ministry, that the most influential and educational programs, and the ones that inmates remember as the most positive when they leave prison, have been precisely those that have gone out into the street, that have gone beyond the wall. I have always highlighted this contradiction: trying to reintegrate by enclosing, building walls. It is a matter of making the prison more permeable, so that the inmates can go out, can participate in groups and activities with people in the street. I have the experience of having walked the Camino de Santiago for many years, not only with inmates, but also with inmates and people from the street, and this coexistence is very positive. For the inmates, it is stimulating, and for the street people who participate in these joint programs, it demystifies prison: it takes away their fear, they realize that they are people worth working with, that they have had a problem in their lives and that they have to pay for it deprived of their freedom, but that they also have a future.
I also believe that the possibility of serving a sentence with community service is not fully exploited, that is, with alternative measures, not everything has to be punished with deprivation of liberty. And this gives good results, in my parish I usually have between three and five people who are serving alternative sentences: they come to work, they maintain the parish, the gardens... I think it is very important to open doors to other types of sentences.
On the other hand, there is an official system of the penitentiary system which is the "Dependent Units". In my parish there is one with five places, for five third grade inmates, and so they can live with a community, in our case with the halfway house, where there are 45 people. They make a first exercise of insertion in this community and then they go to work and collaborate with the same jobs that the reception center has, and participate as citizens like the others. This is a practical, concrete and real reintegration.
