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Abstract
Current survey research reveals that religious conservatives exhibit more punitive attitudes toward criminal offenders than their nonreligious and mainline counterparts. Despite the pervasiveness of conservative Protestant support for the punitive treatment of criminal offenders, evangelical-run prison ministry programs have proliferated in recent decades. This study uses in-depth interviews to examine the motivations of prison ministry workers. The narratives demonstrate that prison ministry workers embrace a distinctive orientation of compassion and, through sustained contact with inmates, they negotiate the tension between conservative religious values and their practical experiences working in prison ministry. From this overarching theme of compassion, three important subthemes emerged: (1) the calling of prison ministry, (2) special connections to the prison context, and (3) a sense of comfort and security with inmates. Overall, we observe how prison ministers negotiate two competing moral logics—judgment and compassion—in light of their religious convictions and experiences with inmate outreach.
Grant support for this study was provided by the Louisville Institute and Mississippi State University's James W. Criss Fund. The authors thank Troy C. Blanchard for helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript.
Notes
1Studies of religion in the prison context inevitably spark discussions about the authenticity of religious commitment. Skeptics of “jailhouse conversions” suggest that inmates may claim a religious conversion or attend religious services in an attempt to obtain special privileges, to get out of their cells for a period of time, as a “front” for illegal activities, or to get credit for “good behavior” that will lead to early release. To be sure, there are seemingly countless examples of this type of disingenuous religious behavior that have been discussed in popular media. However, prison ministry workers interviewed for this study made no reference to their compassion for inmates being conditioned by concerns about false religious conversions or attendance, and thus any discussion of this issue in the thematic sections would be fully speculative.