Unofficial Kairos Website
Unofficial Kairos Website
Dr. Peter P Legins, Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland's Institute of Criminal Justice and Criminology, is considered by most people to be the dean of American criminologists. In a meeting with a group of men who were the founders of Kairos, he said:
"I have known for years, as have most of the leading criminologists in this country, that the greatest hope for an inmate to avoid the revolving doors of our prisons is to undergo a religious conversion experience during his incarceration."
The purpose of Kairos is the building of strong Christian communities within the environment of correctional institutions. This is done through the impact of small, three-to-five-person share and prayer groups of residents in the institutions. These groups meet weekly to share their lives on a very deep spiritual level and to pray for one another and for the residents and staff.
Kairos is a continuing prison ministry always launched with the presentation of a three-day course in Christianity in a correctional institution. Beginning with a spiritual introduction on Thursday evening, the course runs from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The short course is offered, in cooperation with the chaplain, by an interdenominational team of some 50 to 55 men (or women in a women's institution) made up of both clergy and laypersons drawn from the area surrounding the institution. It will be attended by 42 carefully selected leaders chosen by the chaplain from the residents of the institution.
The team will have spent eight weeks in forming a Christian community into which to welcome the residents for the weekend. All team members will have participated in a similar short course in the "free world."
Resident leaders will be chosen by the chaplain of the institution. He will have been asked by Kairos workers to isolate the six or eight environments within the institution which have the greatest impact on the largest percentage of the population. Then he is asked to go within each of those environments and identify the six or eight men who have the greatest impact on the people living in or moving through each of those environments. These leaders are then encouraged to attend the weekend.
Ideally, no more than six or eight of the leaders chosen will be chosen from the chapel environment. Some of the other leaders chosen may be Christians but many will be negative leaders. They will be running loan-shark operations, extortion gangs, dealing drugs and in other ways continuing in anti-social lifestyles similar to those which lead to their incarceration.
Even though prison sentences in the United States are long in comparison with other countries, most inmates will return to society in less than three years. Ninety-six percent of them will eventually be walking the same streets which we walk.
For a variety of reasons, from 30 to 70 percent of those released will return to prison again. In a recently completed study of men and women who have experienced the Kairos ministry in Colorado, that state's Department of Corrections ascertained that only 10 percent of them had again been incarcerated.
Kairos files are full of letters from prison superintendents, wardens, correctional officers and other members of the criminal justice system detailing the extremely favorable impact the Kairos ministry has had on the quality of life in prisons across this country and in Canada.
We know it from their own witnesses. The following are selected from thousands of comments volunteered over the years by those men and women who are recipients of Kairos Prison Ministry.
The Kairos ministry is directed by an interdenominational board of men and women, lay and clergy, drawn from across the nation and Canada.
The ministry is supported by the prayers and donations of concerned churches and individuals throughout the world. All donations are tax-exempt and should be made payable to Kairos.
For more information, contact:
The Rev. Raymond E. Persson
St. John’s Episcopal Church
1676 South Belcher Road
Clearwater, FL 33764-6517
Phone: (727) 521-3101
E-Mail: DeaconRayP@aol.com
Kairos National Website: www.kairosprisonministry.org
Kairos National Phone: 407-629-4948
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