Academic literature on the topic 'Chaplain;prisons'

The film Armagh Stories: Voices from the Gaol (2015)1 is a documentary film edited from the Prisons Memory Archive2 and offers perspectives from those who passed through Armagh Gaol, which housed mostly female prisoners during the political conflict in and about Northern Ireland, known as the Troubles. Armagh Stories is an attempt to represent the experiences of prison staff, prisoners, tutors, a solicitor, chaplain and doctor in ways that are ethically inclusive and aesthetically relevant. By reflecting on the practice of participatory storytelling and its reception in a society transitioning out of violence, I investigate how memory, place and gender combine to suggest ways of addressing the legacy of a conflicted past in a contested present.

The article analyzes the English prison projects: the Hard Labour Bill 1778 and the Penitentiary Act 1779. The author identified the reasons for their creation, sources, key points and their impact on the formation of penitentiary systems. The American Revolutionary War made it impossible relocation of convicted criminals to the colony. His Majesty's Government had to rush to find a replacement for transportation. In the mid-70s of 18 century there were attempts to develop the foundations of new types of punishment that would replace transportation. Such an alternative would hard labor in special Houses of Hard Labor and Penitentiary Houses. The application of punishment by hard labour to criminals sentenced to transportation is developed in the Hulks Act 1776, the Hard Labour Bill 1778 and the Penitentiary Act 1779. The Hard Labour Bill and the Penitentiary Act were not about reforming prisons, but about developing a system of execution and serving a new type of punishment – imprisonment combined with hard labor. The Hard Labor Bill for the first time enshrined the norms that, in 30-40 years, became the basis of the Pennsylvania system, the Auburn system, the progressive system: solitary confinement, the division of convicts into classes, the correction of the offender with the active participation of chaplain, the system disciplinary offence and sanction, initiation of post-penitentiary care, requirements for prison staff, control and supervision of prison activity by the public and judges. The Hard Labor Bill has not been approved by Parliament. It has been slightly redesigned. The idea of a system of Houses of Hard Labor across the country had to be abandoned. Instead, William Blackstone proposed experimental Penitentiary Houses. It was approved in the Penitentiary Act 1779. An analysis of the main provisions of the Penitentiary Act shows that at least part of the regulation of the Penitentiary Houses and their conditions of detention were based on the Hard Labor Bill. Although the ambitious idea of creating a network of prisons throughout the country has been abandoned, Penitentiary Act 1779 has retained the general philosophy of imprisonment in combination with hard labor. Despite the lack of practical implementation, the 1779 Penitentiary Act was essential to further improve the operation of existing detention facilities and build new prisons throughout the country, but as a local initiative rather than a centralized reform.

Prisons have been a both a curiosity and an interest of mine at various times in my life. On occasions in my childhood I drove with my parents past the prison at Long Bay, in Sydney, New South Wales. It was a frightening, but fascinating place. My gaze was fixed on the grounds of the prison, both hoping and fearing to sight an escapee. Later, as a tertiary social work student with an interest in the concept of social control, my thoughts were sometimes focused on the prison. However, it was not until the early part of 1993 that I actually entered a prison. I was then in the final year of my ordinand studies. I had elected, in one of the Field Education components of my studies, to spend time in the Chaplaincy Department of the Long Bay prison in Sydney. The experience was a very significant one in that it was to raise difficult, but fascinating questions for me about the role of religion and the clergy in the prison. During my placement at Long Bay I observed much which strongly suggested that religion and the clergy (chaplains) occupy a peripheral place in the prison system. I was also puzzled by the role of the chaplains, and here I refer to the Protestant chaplains, the only chaplains with whom I had contact. From the perspective of one trained in both social work and theology, it seemed to me that the chaplains were performing many of the same tasks, which one would expect to be performed by the prison welfare staff. In fact it was with difficulty that I could identify anything distinctively 'religious' in the role of the chaplain who, it seemed to me, functioned as something of a quasi welfare professional. It was also very apparent to me that the chaplains had a low profile in the prison; at Long Bay even the chaplaincy offices were outside the prison walls. The chaplains were like exiles, an image which stayed with me long after my placement in the prison had ended. These observations presented a stark contrast to the centrality of religion and the chaplain in the penitentiary, the fledgling prison of the nineteenth century. The chapels in the contemporary prisons, some of which I had seen photographs of, were curiosities. The very prominence and size of the chapel in many of the prisons, both in New South Wales and Britain, many of which were built in the nineteenth century, symbolised the decline of religion from its position of centrality. Religion's function in the contemporary operations and theoretical underpinnings of the prison is marginal by comparison with the penitentiary. The prison chapel is now curiously anachronistic, being used extensively for secular purposes, such as the screening of movies, the holding of various meetings, and sometimes for sports. The liturgical and sacramental functions to which the chapels were dedicated are all but absent, at least for the Protestant chaplains.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2004.
Title from title screen (viewed 5 May 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of Sociology and Social Policy, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2004; thesis submitted 2003. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Chapter 1 locates the emergence of the idea of educating criminals at the turn of the nineteenth century and charts the spread of schemes to teach prisoners to read and write across the convict prison and local prison sectors. Although the reformation of prisoners was a central plank in the campaigns of penal reformers from John Howard to Elizabeth Fry and the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, their efforts focused on religious rather than scholarly instruction. Schemes to teach reading, sometimes writing and occasionally arithmetic in prisons derived from the desire for educational reform. The insertion of a clause within the 1823 Gaols Act, which instructed those in charge of prisons to make provision for instruction in reading and writing, was a consequence of the frustrations of educational policymakers who were failing to establish a national system of elementary education. The 1823 Gaols Act also encouraged the spread of prison education, especially through the powerful figure of the prison chaplain. Education was provided to facilitate spiritual reform, to occupy idle prisoners and as a tool for discipline. By c.1850, the majority of prisons had schools, and instruction was increasingly given to both males and females and to both adults and children.

This chapter illustrates the predominance of narratives about individual self-improvement in prisons, through an ethnography of a meditation class in an incarceration facility. It describes how the researcher becomes participant-observer in this class, shadowing the chaplain who conducts the class, practicing along with the students, and immersing themselves in the prison environment. This ethnographic immersion reveals the power of the prison’s messaging, when replicated by volunteers: that incarcerated individuals must take ownership of their situation, their choices, their attitudes, retooling their reality and reframing it as more “workable” since it is a product of their own choices. It shows the resonance that this idea has for incarcerated persons, many of whom seem to endorse it despite their strong systemic critiques.