This post is the final in a brief series exploring theological education in prison settings – you can read the previous posts by clicking here and here.
On September 8, Winebrenner launched a new paradigm for carceral learning: online, digitally-delivered seminary education using the ICS curriculum. Because the ICS courses are offered online, we only need one instructor in place who teaches from a distance through MS Teams online class sessions. This allowed us to add more prisons. For the same expense as one course at Marion Correctional of about 15 students per cohort, we can now offer to five prisons with up to 15 students per cohort. This first course, Spiritual Formation, taught by Dr. Martin Johnson, has 65 students enrolled from five Ohio prisons:
- Toledo Correctional Institution (ToCI) in Toledo (Level 4)
- Mansfield Correctional Institution (ManCI) in Mansfield (Level 3)
- London Correctional Institution (LoCI) in London (Level 2-3)
- Marion Correctional Institution (MCI) in Marion (Level 2)
- Allen-Oakwood Correctional Institution (AOCI) in Lima (Level 1)
These five prisons allow us to retain the student through the entire 4-year, 12-course curricular plan as students are “leveled down” from time to time in their sentence, moving from a Level 4 to a Level 3 or Level 2. In the past when a student moved from one prison to another, they had to leave the program. Since these five prisons are hosting the same courses in the same sequence, students who move to a lower level of security are able to remain engaged with the curriculum with no break in the continuity.
Our initial class session was very similar to any initial class at Winebrenner. Some technical difficulties, learning new technology, microphones that don’t quite pick up voices, the glare from windows in one video screen, too dark in another screen. We went over assignments, due dates, and why some of our class time would be spent in formational practices and why some of the weekly homework would focus on other spiritual disciplines. The students understood the challenge. Our course is off and running. The only obvious differences: the classrooms are constrained settings, and the students are IPs (incarcerated persons) with some never leaving the carceral setting.
We are so very grateful for the hard work of the chaplains of these five prisons. We could not have the opportunities for service without them.
- Chaplain Kenneth Rupert and Chaplain Harley Willford (ToCI)
- Chaplain Damon Butts (ManCI)
- Chaplain Tom Kehr and Chaplain Michael Haynes (LoCI)
- Chaplain Blaire Smith and Chaplain Robert LeSure (MCI)
- Chaplain Paul Engle (AOCI)
These chaplains have helped with on-site logistics, permissions, the multitude of forms, scheduling, security differences between institutions, organizing the technology, serving as intermediaries with wardens, deputy wardens, the warehouses where books are inspected, and more. They continue to be the backbone of our ICS ministry onsite while also providing and overseeing many more religious programs for the student inmates.
Theological education in the carceral setting has benefits beyond the educational aspects. Lowering internal violence rates and recidivism reduction are examples. However, our primary reasons for holding these courses are informed by our seminary’s vision: Helping Christ-focused servants transform the world. These students are taught with their context in mind, and in this context is a constrained context, an environment where the student inmates’ individual choices, behaviors, and agency are severely restricted by formal rules, physical boundaries, loss of personal agency, high levels of surveillance, and institutional power dynamics that include unwritten inmate “codes of conduct.” The need for trained ministers in this context, who know the jargon and live within the confined space with their fellow inmates, is great. Some of our students may be released soon; some will never be released; others will serve the majority of their adult lives within the walls of one or more of these institutions. Our courses teach more than knowing; we’re working to show them how their doing will grow out of their being – that of being Christ-focuses servants.
- Dr. Martin Johnson, Chief Academic Officer