Dear Friends and Supporters,
I thought you'd be interested in a very positive article on our Life Skills program published by the Enquirer-Journal, front page on January 14, 2010. The article appears below and it can be found online on the Enquirer-Journal web-site. Please pass this on to your friends and contacts whom you think would be interested in some of what Safer Community Ministry does. Visit us online at My Safer Communities, contact our office at 704.283.3573 or email al.lewis@mysafercommunities.org. Thanks and remember that SCM can use your prayer, financial and volunteer support.
Rev. Al Lewis, Executive Director
Enquirer-Journal Article
Life after jail
by Alan Jenkins
MONROE - “How many of you this morning can say that your life has meaning?”
Most people struggle with this question at one point. For the 13 men sitting around two cold metal tables, the answer could mean the difference between a changed set of circumstances or the continued spiraling of a life out of control.
These orange-clad men are inmates at the Union County Jail, and the person asking the question is Wally Gilmer, Life Skills class teacher.“I didn’t have much of a meaning going in, but going out, I’ve got one,” an inmate said.
The class is part of an almost three-decade-long effort by Safer Communities, a group started in Union County to lower the number of men who return to jail after leaving because they committed another crime.
Inmates ask to be part of the seven-week class. If accepted, they join their classmates in a 30-foot room that holds 14 bunk-style beds, two tables and a white board. They remain in that room for seven weeks, leaving only to take outdoor exercise three times a week. During winter’s coldest days, the inmates don’t go outside at all.
In that room, they talk about the process behind making good decisions. They discuss anger management, how to get a job, and how to manage their personal finances.“It’s not just because you’re in here,” Gilmer tells the inmates. “Everybody outside the jail has made stupid, bad decisions.”
The alternative for many of these men could mean a return trip to jail. Nationally, two out of three people who spend time in prison return there, according to the Safer Communities Web site.
The Safer Communities program, founded by the Rev. Al Lewis in 1985 as Covenant Prison Ministries, works to lower that rate. Lewis, an ex-convict himself, created the ministry after working since 1982 to help prisoners try a new way after leaving jail behind.
The program has grown from Lewis’ work in Union and Mecklenburg counties. Today, more than 150 volunteers work with inmates in 18 prisons across the Carolinas. The non-profit agency pays salaries to three part-time and one full-time employee, Lewis said.
Fundraising helps pay those salaries, and for printed publications and books used in the discussions with inmates, Lewis said.
The program’s results are phenomenal, board member Jay Ross said.
“We let them know somebody cares,” Ross said. “That’s the bottom line.”
The work matters to more than just those in the program. Each inmate costs the taxpayers $27,000 per year, Ross said.
There’s a personal boost for those who help the inmates, volunteer Chad Gurley said.
“To me, it’s been fulfilling,” Gurley, who has volunteered for the program the past six years, said. “It helps me just to know that I’m contributing to help someone else.”
The biggest benefit comes to the inmate who doesn’t return to the Union County Jail.
“One convict said this was the best seven weeks of his life,” Gilmer said. “Not of his time in prison. His life.”
