Rick Warren’s best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life” — and its accompanying program — is making the rounds in more than just Sunday School classes and discipleship groups. It’s catching on in at least one prison as well.
According to prison officials, more than 400 medium-security inmates at Sierra Conservation Center, Jamestown, Calif., have participated in the “Purpose-Driven Life” program. And so far, it seems to be working.
Officials at Sierra are crediting the 40-day program with significantly cutting violence among the inmates who participate.
Before the program began last year, “we couldn’t go more than two weeks without a lockdown or without one gang attacking another,” Hector Lozano, who coordinates the prison’s substance abuse treatment programs, told the Associated Press. “People used to fight first and ask questions later. This got people talking together, as opposed to having one group charge another group. It was like cavalry warfare.”
The first 200 inmates completed the program in April 2003. During the previous year, there were five riots, 103 violent incidents, four staff assaults, 1,226 inmate disciplinary reports and five lockdowns.
In the year since, violent incidents dropped by a third, to 67, and disciplinary reports declined to 1,067. Four employees were assaulted, but there was just one riot and lockdown.
The Christian program “has definitely played a role,” prison spokesman Lt. Kenny Calhoun told AP.
Warren visited the prison last August, and his church donated the books, Bibles, study materials and videos. “We called and said we don’t have the money (for the materials),” Lozano said. “They said, ‘Your money’s no good here anyway,’” and donated what he estimates as $5,000 to $10,000 worth of materials. (EP)
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