Volunteer Chaplains Reach Out to Inmates

Cypress Creek Mirror—December 9th, 2011

By Sheriff Adrian Garcia – More and more, inmates at the Harris County Jail are saying, “Get me to the church on time.” Two years ago, average monthly voluntary attendance at religious services for inmates inside the jail was 7,000. Now it’s 15,000, even while the overall population of the jail continues to fall.

For God’s sake, what is going on?

Well, my staff and I have been increasing and improving chaplaincy programs at the jail. A record-high 450 of your law-abiding Harris County neighbors, from just about every major religion, are volunteering to provide spiritual enrichment to inmates. Just as important, visitors and staff are combining prayer with action — by lining up support services and programs for inmates who are on their way out the door.

Spirituality in the jail is a plus for its own sake. When inmates are attending weekly services, reading the Bible and other religious books, and looking into their souls about what got them into jail in the first place, it makes for more peaceful and productive inmates and a calmer jail environment. That is no small thing in the nation’s third largest jail, which books and releases 140,000 inmates a year.

But of course, our chaplaincy programs are also aimed at giving inmates the best chance to remake themselves as law-abiding citizens in the future. Religious services are one of the ways through which inmates can build positive values and morals. When inmates who return to the free world have the strength to go straight, they make your lives and their own lives safer. They also save taxpayers money by not forcing us to provide them with the usual accommodations over and over again.

We’d find some efficient use of government grant money for the hiring of counselors who can place ready-for-release inmates in public programs that will make them less likely to re-offend by addressing substance abuse, mental illness, poverty, homelessness and other challenges.

But the availability of such is somewhere between rare and none.

I’m grateful to our chaplaincy staff and volunteers for stepping into the void. They even work with inmates’ families – at no charge, of course – to ease the transition for criminals looking to remake their lives.

There are many reasons why jail population is declining without sacrificing public safety. My gut tells me that our enriched chaplaincy program is one of the reasons.