Tight budget threatens prison chaplaincy program

One of the few threads of hope for men and women in Georgia’s prisons is in danger of getting snipped.

Prison chaplains, hope’s sales force among a population with many reasons to despair, are facing furloughs because of the state budget crunch.

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Elissa Eubanks/eeubanks@ajc.com

Chaplain Susan Bishop (left) speaks with inmate Pamela Ogletree at Metro State Prison last month. ‘We are preventive maintenance,’ Bishop says of her job as a chaplain.

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The Department of Corrections is prepared to cut up to 10 percent from its budget, depending on how the economy fares. In December, an unknown number of the department’s 31 part-time chaplains could be told their services are still needed but no longer affordable.

The system also has 18 full-timers, whom department Commissioner James E. Donald has said he is committed to keeping to help Georgia’s 57,000 inmates.

The chaplains are a lifeline to inmates who depend on their ministers for a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on or maybe a tough sermon about redemption in a world where they find little of it offered or given.

“Our hope is in God. And that’s what the chaplaincy represents,” said Chandra Johnson, a woman serving eight years at Metro State Prison in south Atlanta.

Tracy Fortson, an inmate serving a life sentence, added, “The chaplain program offers help to those who don’t have someone on the outside.”

Some of the help comes in the boxes of Christmas treats and small gifts during the holidays. Chaplains play a key role in these programs by organizing churches and others to provide for the inmates.

Chaplain Susan Bishop at Metro State Prison has weathered cuts to the program before. When chaplains leave, she said, volunteer programs sponsored by churches and mosques suffer. There is no one there to help coordinate them.

“We have wonderful volunteers, but to be part of the fabric of this place and understand the dynamics takes someone who is here full time,” she said.

Chaplains minister not only to the inmates, but to the staff, because they also have bad days and need spiritual help, Bishop said.

Chaplains are a go-between, knowing both sides, hearing whispers from both about who is up or down, who is in a bad mood and likely to cause trouble.

“We are proactive middle men. We de-escalate a situation before it happens,” Bishop said.

She also is a multifaceted service provider, organizing a choir and other activities, acquiring books for the library, teaching, counseling, preaching and offering an open door for those who want to change.

“We try to make a difference in the life of people so they won’t come back here,” she said.

Andrea Shelton, who founded HeartBound Ministries, an outside group of volunteers who help out in prisons, heard of the looming cuts in the chaplain program and started pressuring Georgia leaders to rethink the plan.

“It ticks me off that we are spending millions on a new Department of Corrections headquarters in Forsyth,” she said. “Let’s get our priorities straight and get serious about rehabilitating folks.” She was referring to the abandoned college campus north of Macon the state bought for new offices, whose price when refurbished is projected at $50 million.

Shelton said the state should put a hiatus on that project and put its money into programming that could reduce recidivism.

Bert Brantley, Gov. Sonny Perdue’s spokesman, said the governor let department heads decide where to make budget cuts.

Paul Czachowski, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said Commissioner Donald is looking at furloughs as a last resort and hoping for the best.

However, the latest figures reflecting reduced tax collections are grim.

“We are in such a state of flux, we are going to have to play it by ear,” Czachowski said.