Several years ago I served in the legislature. I was on the Corrections Committee, and one of my frustrations in the legislature was the fact that people had pretty much given up on rehabilitation of folks who were in the correction facilities. The professionals would wink and nod and say that was a nice idea of Karl Menninger had years ago, but we really don’t do that anymore. We’re just warehousing the prisoners. It was very frustrating. Everyone’s concerned about crime rising, riots in the streets, and issues involving crime.
I had a conversation with Mary Flin of the Urban Ministry Institute about their unique approach to work inside of our correctional systems. Through our conversation I learned about TUMI, a seminary level education offered to incarcerated individuals.