Jails now house not only serious offenders, but all those people whom society does not know what to do with. These include the homeless, the mentally ill, the unemployable. It seems to me we are becoming more and more intolerant as a society of people who are not earning money, not fitting in and being good consumers, who are in some way handicapped or "different".
That sense of being unacceptable leads to such people opting out and acting out their sense of being unwanted. They are not a danger to society. They need to be welcomed and valued, not criminalized and rejected as "losers".
I think jail will become more a place of personal growth and transformation only when society does away with its worship of the economy, its tolerance of drugs and violence, its devaluing of the spiritual.
Why do I continue to go into prisons as a chaplain if I think there is so much wrong with them? I ask myself that regularly! But the truth is that there is nothing in even the most serious of offenders that is not also in me in some way - the capacity for violence, the intolerance, the fear of relationships, the looking for someone to blame. I find in many of the people I meet a fearless honesty. When they come out of denial and admit to their addictions and the harm they have done to others as well as to themselves, when they weep over the abuse, the neglect that so many of them suffered in childhood, when they tell me of the pain and self hatred they have carried for years, I know that this is where God wants me to be. I know that this is where Jesus Himself chose to be. I know that this is where life and growth break forth - in that place of greatest pain and humiliation. - St Columban's Mission Society E-News (click below for full article)
http://www.columban.org.au/e-news/e-news-vol.-2-no.-15/Love-Hate-Relationship.html