It was Thrust upon Me
By Cornelia Scott Cree
CJC 111
October 10,2022
It was Thrust Upon Me
In about 1968 I had a Bible study in my home. An older woman came in and announced that God said I was to go to the woman’s prison and conduct Bible Studies. Which I did. A week or two later I learned that an attempt had been made on her life in Sunday School. So that is what it means to hear from God!
But I did enjoy it, and over a period of 7 years I was able to bring in friends to teach. The Chief Chaplain of the Prison system housed in Central Prison had called the Bible “that crap” so we knew we had a job to do. Later when I was put on a Sentencing Commission, we were able to fund an additional dozen chaplains for the system. I do not know now if they still are hired and functioning. Inmates need a person they can talk to that they can trust not to spread the information around.
Then in 1979 I wrote a book entitled All of My Friends are Felons. It has a new title now, but it presented inmates as personalities and real people. There is a tendency to think that once a crook always crook. People who go to prison I discovered were the ones who were caught, or those who became embroiled in criminal behavior and locked in it, for whatever reason, bad habits, bad upbringing or bad company, lack of resources, intellectual, moral and financial, to solve problems and of course limited ability to make good decisions. And mental issues as well. I had two alcoholics in my family and they had criminal tendencies when drunk.
Many of the boys I met in Swannanoa Prison had such rotten parents I felt that the Biblical standard of making parents responsible for errant children had some merit for today. One set of parents was so evil I could only rejoice that the kid had two Pilipino grandparents he could count on for a stable future. His mother stole $500 from him, and his father made him watch group sex. He was the brightest inmate I ever met; he had designed and made a rag wing airplane when he was 15. What might have happened to him if he had been born to a different family.
When I taught at an alternative school in Jackson County, I met some parents who had a criminal mindset – obedience to any law was beyond them – and their kids knew it. It was sad.
Whatever process of reform future legislatures examine they must start thinking in terms of criminals as being whole people. And that is what my coming book is all about