For 20 years, prisoners and ex-prisoners in southern Africa have shared their stories with me, trusting me, in my role as a priest and prison chaplain, with their most personal experiences. This has shown me with brutal clarity how broken the world we live in really is.
I felt compelled from within to put down my experiences and insights, and to let others know that those inside our prisons are our own brothers and sisters, many of whom have never experienced the love of a parent. Many of them are victims of poverty, violence and abuse: Young men and women with shattered dreams who turned to drugs to blot out their pain or to feel a sense of belonging – and then to crime to support their habit.
Correctional services cost the South African taxpayer an estimated R22-billion annually. Would it not make sense to insist on seeing the value for money in the form of effective programmes supporting the rehabilitation and reintegration of ex-criminals, with safer communities as the result?