Stop the prison chaplaincy cuts
I read with great concern The Guardian story ‘ Contracts of part- time chaplains in prisons won’t be renewed’ ( Oct. 6, 2012).
If the measure of a just society is taken by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, then the Canada of Harper’s Conservatives is failing miserably.
During the past year we’ve seen their shameful treatment of the housing crisis on the Attawapiskat Reserve, for which they were recently chastised by the Federal Court.
They’ve changed regulations so that poor senior citizens will soon wait to age 67 instead of age 65 to collect Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
They’ve dramatically curtailed the health coverage of refugees. They’ve made significant changes to the employment insurance program, effectively clawing back more of the limited amount parttime workers on the program can keep.
And now they’ve axed virtually all but the Christian chaplains who provide services to federal prison inmates.
Aboriginal Canadians. Poor seniors. Refugees. The unemployed. Prisoners. These are the members of society that are least able to defend themselves, and they’re the ones that the Harper fiscal constraints are hitting the hardest.
There are 21,702 federal inmates who identify themselves as belonging to a religious affiliation. Fifty- seven per cent are Christians. Forty- three per cent are of other faiths or are unattached. ( 2006 figures)
The Corrections Service of Canada meets its mandated obligations to these people for “access to adequate levels of resources ( leadership, opportunities for worship, educational resources, religious articles, dietary requirements) to allow offenders to practise their religion or spirituality as fully as they desire, ( up to a level that is generally available to people in the community) within the correctional setting.” ( CSC website).
They do this with the aid of both fulltime and part- time chaplains. The fulltime chaplains, save one, are all Christian. The part- time chaplains include 31 Christian and 18 non- Christian chaplains, the latter addressing the needs of the 761 Muslim, 753 Native Spiritual, 387 Buddhist, 159 Jewish and 102 Sikh inmates.
Now, in an effort to save $ 1.3 million, Public Security Minister Vic Toews has announced that all of the part- time chaplaincy positions will be cut at the end of 2012, and the needs of non- Christian inmates met through the work of prison system volunteers.
This move is simply and totally unacceptable. As the Correctional Services’ website properly points out, the provision of multi- faith chaplaincy services to inmates is required by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which states, in part, that: “Every individual is equal before the law and has the right to the equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination, and particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”
By withdrawing all but one of the non- Christian federally funded chaplains, they appear to be in clear violation of the inmates’ charter rights.
Ironically, the other federally funded chaplaincy program that provided for the comfort and benefit of Canadian Forces members is going in the opposite direction, towards greater religious inclusiveness.
That program, which boasts 197 fulltime and 155 part- time chaplains, accepted its first Muslim chaplain, Suleymabn Demiray, in 2003, and accepted the first Jewish chaplain since the Second World War, Lazer Danzinger, in 2008.
If we can be moving towards a greater acceptance of religious diversity within the Canadian Forces, I fail to see why we’re moving in the opposite direction with Correctional Service Canada.
Except while deployed on operations, sailors, soldiers and airmen can seek out religious support in their own communities, should they wish. Locked up behind bars, our prison inmates don’t have that choice.
And it’s just not acceptable to say that volunteers will fill the coming void. If we provide federally funded Christian chaplains to inmates and don’t make reasonable federally funded provision for other prison populations, we’re failing to provide equal benefit of the law, plain and simple.
Prison chaplains provide essential support to inmates, not only in terms of rehabilitation services, but also where social re- integration is concerned. They not only aid inmates, they also help the inmates’ families, who are also victims of their loved ones’ misdemeanors.
Faith- based changes in behaviour are among the most powerful agents of reform in an inmate’s life. Attending to the spiritual and mental health well- being of inmates is crucial to their needs, and not an add- on that can be addressed when and where possible by volunteers alone.
If anything, the resources that support spiritual change should be increased, not dramatically decreased. Above all, chaplaincy resources should be managed in a way that respects the human rights of the inmate population, and in a manner that reflects our increasingly multi- denominational and multi- ethnic society and its needs as a whole. Doing so will not just benefit inmates. It has the promise to benefit us all.