Finding Freedom In Confinement

This unique volume brings together scholars from around the world to examine the contours of religion in prison life. Religion long has been a tool for correctional treatment and inmate survival, but only since the 1980s have social scientists studied the nature, extent, practice, and impact of faith and faith-based prison programs. Although the concept of "jailhouse conversion" is common in the cultural lexicon, most fail to understand the nuances of how faith may work in prison contexts. This volume contains the most contemporary and cutting-edge research on religion in prison life, which includes data-driven (quantitative and qualitative), conceptual, and policy-oriented papers. These chapters will allow readers to move beyond a strictly emotional understanding of faith and toward a more scientific understanding of how prisoners use faith in everyday life--Introduction

What is the nature and impact of faith and religion in prison? This book summarizes contemporary and cutting-edge research on religion in correctional contexts, enabling a scientific understanding of how prisoners use faith in their everyday lives. Religion long has been a tool for correctional treatment. In the United States, religion was the primary treatment modality in the first prisons. Only since the 1980s, however, have social scientists begun to study the nature, extent, practice, and impact of faith and faith-based prison programs. Bringing together the knowledge of scholars from around the world, this single-volume book offers readers a science- and research-based understanding of how prisoners use faith in everyday life, examining the role of religion in prison/correctional contexts from a variety of interdisciplinary and international viewpoints. By considering the perspectives of professionals actually working in corrections or prison settings as well as those of scholars studying religion and/or criminal justice, readers of Finding Freedom in Confinement: The Role of Religion in Prison Life can gain insight into the most contemporary research on religion in correctional contexts. The book contains data-driven, conceptual, and policy-oriented essays that cover major religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam within correctional environments. It also addresses subject matter such as the roles of prison chaplains and correctional officers and the relationships between religion and common aspects of prison life, such as drug abuse, gangs, violence, prisoner identity, rights of prisoners, and rehabilitation.

Ten Years inside Shelton Prison is a moving picture that captures what happens inside a prison. Shocking evil and joyful healings live together side by side where the Gospel goes successfully. A guard being stabbed to death with a ballpoint pen during a chapel service stands next to tears of joy running down the face of a Russian mafia member when he was born again. Robert walked into Shelton prison for the first time. As he walked past fences that were covered with razor wire blindingly reflecting the harsh sun, he was afraid. Iron gates slammed behind him. Guards were unaware of his trembling hands. Men in orange suits began to watch him. There was no place to run. This was the beginning of ten years in Shelton prison, where the author served the Lord. There were great blessings: fearful faces accepted the Lord Jesus and became new creatures in Christ. There were dangerous moments: an inmate cut Robert, forcing him to go through AIDS testing. Yet he also had a prisoner's scarred head laid on his shoulder, who after accepting Jesus smiled at him and said, "I needed that." The controlling purpose of Ten Years is to present the four biblical steps to freedom from incarceration, whether inside a prison or addicted outside of a prison. The four parts of this graphic book are: imprisoned, instruction, health, and freedom. The book concludes with two appendices on important subjects: "Learning How to Resist the Devil" and a famous therapy for treating addictions, "Family of Origin Therapy." After the appendices, thirty-three itemized summaries or compendia are given with the reference pages included. Also, there are referenced sites for ten of Robert's poems that are included in this prison journey log.

This resource explains simple tools for achieving internal freedom, includingbelly breathing, letting go, forgiving, and claiming responsibility for one'slife.

There are many forms of liberation—some that exist at the mercy of circumstance and others that can never be taken away. In this stirring and timely collection of stories, essays, poems, and letters, Jarvis Jay Masters explores the meaning of true freedom on his road to inner peace through Buddhist practice. He reveals his life as a young African American man surrounded by violence, his entanglement in the criminal justice system, and—following an encounter with Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche—an unfolding commitment to nonviolence and peacemaking. At turns joyful, heartbreaking, frightening, and soaring with profound insight, Masters’s story offers a vision of hope and the possibility of freedom in even the darkest of times.

Kafka's literary universe is organized around constellations of imprisonment. Freedom and Confinement in Modernity proposes that imprisonment does not signify a tortured state of the individual in modernity. Rather, it provides a new reading of imprisonment suggesting it allows Kafka to perform a critique of a modernity instead.

In 1999, Quan Huynh shot and killed another man in a gang-related incident in Hollywood, California. He received a prison sentence of fifteen years to life in a state that, at the time, did not parole prisoners with life sentences. Behind bars, Quan continued his downward spiral. This could have been the end of the story for Quan, as it is for many prisoners. But somewhere along the way, he discovered a new path--one that prompted him to commit to self-reflection, truth, and personal responsibility. Sparrow in the Razor Wire is Quan's story of transformation inside a place many see as the end of the road. In his book, he shares the journey of redemption and discovery that led to his ultimate freedom. He found that, no matter the prison, the key to unlocking the door is in each one of us.

From the pits of addiction to the mountain tops of recovery, come take a journey with an ordinary man named R. J.. Gain a deeper understanding of the heartache and pain caused by pornography use, and how it causes people to isolate themselves from what they really need to recover. Find hope for true freedom and release from solitary confinement. "This book not only reveals the truth of consequences, but also the hope that comes from God and His precious word. I commend this book to you without hesitation and ask that you give it careful consideration as to how God can set you free." Frank S. Page - Pastor, First Baptist Church Taylors, SC, former President of the Southern Baptist Convention "Jimmy Tarrant has given a great gift to Christian men who need someone to say something helpful about the subject of pornography on the Internet." Marion D. Aldridge - Coordinator, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of South Carolina "Tarrant offers hope, healing strategies, and scriptural encouragement to believers and non-believers seeking recovery from the pains and false promises of living with 'secret sin'." Edward H. Hammett - Author of Spiritual Leadership in a Secular Age, Professional Certified Coach "Jimmy's book helped me better understand the struggle men have with pornography; I could feel the anguish and heartache of R. J.." Connie Tarrant - Author's wife Having served as a youth minister, campus minister, and senior pastor, Jimmy Tarrant has over 25 years of ministerial experience. Currently, he is teaching high school math while working to start a new church (The Journey Community Church) in upstate South Carolina. He and his wife, Connie, are getting ready to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. The couple has two beautiful daughters, Gabrielle and Michaela. In his spare time, Jimmy is an avid fisherman.