The Inside Story On Giving Love

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The inside story on giving love the hard cell

By Baird

January 11, 2003

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In 1971 Stanford University academics conducted a now famous

experiment where a group of students were divided into guards and

prisoners and then placed in a simulated prison environment. The

two-week project was abandoned after six days because of the brutality

which ensued from the division along power lines: captives and

captors. The head of the Stanford team, Philip Zimbardo, said: " In

only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became

depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. "

A film based on this, The Experiment, released late last year, was one

of the most chilling I have seen. It was terrifying partly because of

the rapid breakdown in relations between the two groups: the impotence

and resentment of the prisoners, and the thirst for power and cruelty

of the guards. Think of the Freak from Prisoner on a really bad day,

cloned.

It's an oft-stated truth: once we have power over someone, the

temptation to lose sight of that person's basic humanity is obvious.

And the rhetoric of law reform - which persistently promotes prisons

as the sole answer to crime - from both sides of the political chamber

seems to confirm that.

Now there is another experiment under way in NSW's bulging prisons,

which is the flipside of that conducted at Stanford: it focuses on

prisoners as human beings. It's a program run by a virtually unknown

group called Kairos - a Greek word meaning God's time. A group of

Christians from different denominations spend a week in prisons with a

selected group of inmates, talking to them about love, acceptance and

how to learn to forgive others and yourself. Since it began in 1995,

almost 2000 prisoners in NSW have been through the program, which has

spread to and South Australia.

Organisers claim that in the United States, where it has been running

for 25 years, those who did Kairos are far less likely to return to

prison: 10 per cent instead of the usual 70 per cent.

Academics are sceptical: most of the evidence is anecdotal, and there

has been no longitudinal study in Australia about the impact of Kairos

on recidivism.

The executive director of Kairos, Edwin Galea, said it was conducting

research with the Department of Corrective Services, but insisted: " We

don't want to brag too much about what's going on because we want to

leave that in the hands of the Lord. "

The program seems to centre more on the fundamentals of Christianity

than institutional dogma, and is refreshing because of it. Still, the

idea of sending Christians into prison is problematic for some - will

they impose an ideology, tut-tut, or push vulnerable people to

convert? Is it being too soft on people who have done evil things? Or

is it about the possibility of redemption, and change?

It's almost unnerving how effusive the staff who have observed the

program in the prisons are. Commander Lee Downes, the head of women's

prisons in NSW, supervised three Kairos programs while she was

governor of Grafton and then Mulawa, at Silverwater. She believes they

are a powerful force for change. " The best benefit is that we have a

whole lot of people who have never been loved unconditionally. They

don't have much self-esteem, they have never had anyone tell them they

are good and worthwhile people, and for the duration of Kairos, that's

happening ... Even if it has a Christian faith as its basis, I don't

think that detracts from what they are doing. "

The freaky thing about these stories is that Mulawa is the most

violent jail in NSW: half the inmates are assaulted each year, and

almost one in five officers is attacked. But Downes claims that Kairos

improves relationships with prison officers, as well as between

inmates, and has even resulted in some women being taken out of

protective custody. One extremely violent woman who had been in and

out of jail several times had not returned after doing Kairos.

This experiment, reliant entirely on volunteers, raises dozens of

questions about evil, crime, penance, redemption and hope. It's easy

to condemn prisoners from afar, and whip up community fear. Of course

people should be punished for their crimes, but it seems that, as

politicians vie for the mantle of " toughest on law and order " , it's

people working behind the scenes in prisons who are tackling the hard

stuff.

After attending two closing ceremonies, where prisoners emerge at the

end of the week, even I could see the extraordinary impact of this

program. Women stand up shyly and talk of lifetimes of abuse,

uncertain because they have not spoken publicly before. Prisoners who

have committed the most extraordinary crimes beam and say they have

never been so happy, and never felt love - or had self worth - before.

At Long Bay, I've observed toughened, tattooed blokes stand with their

arms around each other, tears dripping off their chins.

At the last ceremony I went to, a guard said that Kairos had changed

the way she thought about the prisoners: what we all needed to be

reminded, she said, was that they are human beings.

source: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/10/1041990094055.html