June 14, 2010
By Ariel Miller

DIOCESE OF SOUTHERN OHIO – Not long ago, Anthony Hakim Johnson was doing time for a felony. Now, he's giving back to his community as a chemical dependency counselor while studying for his bachelor's degree at Capitol University through a Presidential Scholarship. Mentoring by Episcopalian Madeleine Trichel helped him transform his life.

Now, they team up to teach inmates at Marion Correctional and educate the wider community on the potential of ex-offenders.

Such outcomes are still too rare. Almost 30,000 people are released from Ohio prisons every year. Faced by huge challenges, 38 percent end up back in prison. The impact is devastating: talents wasted, children deprived of parents' care and support, and taxpayers paying more than $25,000 per prisoner a year.

An ardent team of deacons and lay leaders met in May to tackle that grim reality. Chaired by the Rev. Jackie Burns, a prison chaplain at Marion Correctional, the group responded to the call by the Episcopal Community Services Foundation board to engage fellow Episcopalians in equipping former inmates to build constructive and fulfilling lives.

They've christened the initiative E-FREE: Episcopalians For Responsible Empowerment of Ex-Offenders. This team will pool decades of experience in corrections to inform churches of the challenges facing returning prisoners and concrete ways they can improve the outcomes.

E-FREE members set clear goals for their work in 2010:

• To collect stories of challenge and success, including video interviews;

• Assemble a speaker's bureau;

• Compile a toolkit of best practices;

• Organize field trips;

• Join statewide legislative advocacy for more effective corrections;

• Develop preaching and teaching resources.

The first challenge is to make a dent in communities' ignorance, pessimism and prejudice. That will help build the grassroots support among Ohioans – especially faith communities – needed to change laws and public policies that hamper re-entry.

"We have two prisons in Madison County, but I don't see churches stepping up to do much," said Barbara Tope, senior warden of Trinity, London, and board chair of Ministry for Community (MfC), an ecumenical non-profit incubator that organizes solutions to unmet community needs. MfC's executive director, Twyla McNamara, has a professional background in corrections and is already working to better connect ex-offenders to resources through local Benefit Bank teams.

The wide-ranging work and volunteer service of E-FREE members illustrates myriad other ways faith communities can help ex-offenders do well.

Conflict resolution trainer Madeleine Trichel (Trinity, Columbus) and the Rev. Irene Radcliff (St. John's, Columbus) teach life skills and serve as part of the Christian support team for Horizon, a yearlong interfaith character formation program for inmates at Marion Correctional. Its alumni have only a 12 percent rate of recidivism. New volunteers are needed, especially as the program seeks to expand to Chillicothe.

Radcliff also serves on Kairos Outside teams, providing retreats and spiritual support to women with loved ones in prison. She'd love to see churches organize bus trips so that parents, spouses and children in poverty can visit relatives in prisons far from home.

The Rev. Craig Foster of St, John's, Columbus and Paul Rhynard, outreach chair of St. Paul's, Greenville, are volunteering with faith-based community initiatives addressing needs from anger management to housing. Rhynard, who advised many ex-offenders in his career as a Veterans Administration vocational counselor, is working to lead his congregation into more hands-on roles as he continues to help ex-felons in Greenville's faith-based Good Samaritan Homes to win and keep jobs. He notes that churches can start with something as low-risk as providing sack lunches for Citizens Circles, the community-based mentoring programs organized by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections.

Gifford Doxsee, a retired history professor from Ohio University, was a prisoner of war with Kurt Vonnegut during the firebombing of Dresden and has never forgotten what it feels like to be in prison. He has taught inmate GED classes, served on many Kairos teams and befriended ex-offenders who have gone on to start powerful re-entry ministries of their own. His parish – Good Shepherd, Athens – is teaming up with a Methodist church in town to employ and mentor an ex-offender as sexton.

Working with the non-profit Ohio Justice and Policy Center, attorney Pam Thurston of St. Mark's is developing a comprehensive database of thousands of provisions in Ohio law –collatoral sanctions – which continue to penalize people even after they have completed their prison sentence. Hundreds of hiring and professional licensing prohibitions bar ex-offenders from many jobs for which they are otherwise qualified.

Foster and the Rev. Canon Karl Ruttan, who staffs the diocese's Social Justice Network, will work to inform churches and individuals on opportunities for legislative advocacy to support policies that are more just and practical in fostering successful re-entry.

Foster, a joyful veteran of many Kairos retreat teams with inmates and a mentor in the Columbus ex-offender support group Harbor on the Hill, stresses the need to train church people to be canny as well as caring in mentoring ex-felons.

Arriving some time ago for her regular Monday night gathering with the men in the Horizon program at Marion Correctional, Madeleine Trichel told them of being mugged outside her own house. A hush fell over the group as they looked at this slender, white-haired woman who had become dear to them over the months they had spent together.

A man named Ronnie stood up. "I have to tell you something. I did that to a lady once. I never thought about it.

"I am never going to do that again."

"He's out now, and doing well," Trichel says. "Ronnie! He has the bluest eyes you ever saw!"

This is the kind of epiphany that the leaders of E-FREE want to share.

If your congregation is already part of the solution or you want to explore ways to get involved, write or call at ECSF@eos.net, or (513) 221-0547.

Episcopal News Service
Ariel Miller is an Interchange contributor.