Amid virus lockdowns, prison ministry groups had to adapt
Normally Teresa Stanfield spends her days in prisons talking with inmates about how she changed the course of her troubled life, and how they can do the same. But the coronavirus has locked her on the outside.
“When COVID came and shut down programming, I was extremely disappointed,” said Stanfield, Oklahoma field director with Virginia-based Prison Fellowship. “But I also knew that God had a plan and we were going to do everything we could to continue to encourage our returning citizens and keep our volunteers connected.”
For Stanfield, the answer was Floodlight. Developed in March after correctional facilities closed to visitors, it’s a collection of spiritual and inspirational programming that’s delivered online and via closed-circuit television to prisons across the country, reaching a total of over 400,000 inmates — 1,000 times more than Stanfield’s largest in-person presentations.
It’s one of the most ambitious and successful examples of how faithbased organizations have adapted and innovated during the pandemic to keep up their prison ministries and services.
Some, like Prison Fellowship, are producing content for wide distribution behind bars. Others are recording religious services and prayers for specific correction systems to distribute through prison television systems. Some are turning to direct mail to inmates in the form of letters of spiritual encouragement, study lessons, Bibles and religious magazines, or sending supplies to prison officials and chaplains of various faiths and denominations to distribute.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, “looked for every way possible” to continue outreach to incarcerated populations with their message of hope at the 3,315 correctional facilities where the faith’s volunteers are active, spokesman Robert Hendriks said. That has ranged from online content via CCTV to personal messages via the Postal Service.
“It was not an option for us to stop our ministry,” Hendriks said.
Prisons, by design restrictive and with little personal space, have been fertile grounds for the spread of the coronavirus.
According to data compiled by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project, more than 108,000 inmates had tested positive for the virus as of Aug. 25, and there have been 928 reported deaths. More than 24,000 staff members including nurses, correctional officers, chaplains and administrators tested positive as well, and 72 deaths have been publicly reported.
Overall, the rate of known infections among inmates is nearly three times that of the general U.S. population.