Ten Years Inside Shelton Prison: Finding Freedom

By Robert L. Segress

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 prisoners 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 Roberts poems that are included in this prison journey log.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449761943

Robert L. Segress

ROBERT SEGRESS, Th M, PhD, served as a college professor (full-time and interim) and psychotherapist for twenty-five years. He was director of psychological services at Riverton General Hospital in Washington and is an ordained minister who served as an interim pastor. Robert authored T e Biblical Approach to Psychology in 1972.

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Copyright © 2012 by Robert L. Segress, Ph.D.

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Bible References Used: The King James Version (KJV) is used for the majority of quotes throughout the book. All others translation are listed below and referenced as indicated.

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, CA

Copyright: Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

New International Version (NIV)

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL

And Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI

Copyright: Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, COPYRIGHT 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society, Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

New King James Version (NKJV)

Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Copyright 1990, 1985, 1983

New Testament in Modern Speech (WNT)

R.F. Weymouth, D.Lit.

James Clarke & Co., London

Note: This translation is approximately 100 years old, written before 1917

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-6195-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-6196-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-6194-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012914370

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/29/2012

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Part 1 —Imprisoned

Chapter One Why Do People Go To Prison?

Chapter Two Terrorism

Chapter 3 Hiding From Harm

Part 2 —Instruction

Chapter Four Inspired Threes

Chapter 5 Love Endures

Chapter 6 Innocence

Part 3 —Health

Chapter 7 Mental Health—God’s Definition

Chapter 8 Health Comes From Jesus

Chapter 9 Healing Faith

Part 4—Freedom

Chapter 10 A New Garden

Chapter 11 Rainbow Grains

Chapter 12 Chosen Friends

Conclusion

Appendices

Appendix A

For my angel and the flock that she has served and blessed for many years. Specifically my wife, Kathryn the Great [as I’ve named her], who has been God’s messenger to both bless me and keep me on track. Without her as my partner in the preparation of this manuscript, I could not have kept going.

Also for our daughter, Janis, who used her literary skills to help cut the deadwood away, and our son, Robert, who shared some of what he had learned about script writing when he was in the film industry. The moral support from our other children, Chris, Jon and Kathryn also helped carry Ten Years inside Shelton Prison to the finish line.

PREFACE

Serving inside a prison for a decade taught me about the realities of imprisonment, whether inside razor wire or outside prison walls.

The vehicle that took me to this understanding was my time serving inside Shelton Prison in Washington State. Shelton is somewhat unique, as all the prisoners are felons who have been given a sentence of at least four years. A felon is a person who has committed one of the more serious crimes such as murder, rape, and drug dealing. Felons west of the Cascade Mountains are sent to Shelton for an evaluation, normally three to four months, before it is decided what prison they should be sent to or if they should remain at the Shelton prison. Each prisoner is evaluated, and if it is found necessary they are put on medication. One of the reasons it is interesting serving at Shelton is that a number of inmates forget to take their meds periodically.

Shelton is a mission field that is somewhat like a revolving door. We are always getting a new batch of prisoners, many of whom are eventually sent to other prisons in the western part of Washington. Those that accept the Lord as their Savior can then take the gospel to the various places that they are sent.

The huge grounds of the prison are approximately two miles square, and house a large inmate population of approximately 1,300 hundred prisoners. There are several different parts to the prison which include ball fields, large gardens, buildings that house and feed the general prison population, and also a maximum security building that houses those that are considered too dangerous to mix with the general population. Maximum security cells are designed to house some of the most dangerous people living on our planet. They live twenty-three out of twenty-four hours seven days a week, in eight-by-ten-foot concrete bunkers that have a slit filled with thick smoky unbreakable glass. There are prisoners who choose to never leave their cells after they have been in the maximum security cells for a while. I personally think I would rather have the death penalty than to face the rest of my life in an eight-by-ten-foot maximum security cell. One of the realities that I learned, during twenty-five years of earning my living as a full-time licensed psychotherapist, was that some individuals are untreatable and have to be dealt with realistically.

On a brighter note, Shelton has a prison church in which we are able to provide services to a fairly large number of prisoners. Many have been born-again while in prison or have gotten back to the Lord, much the way the prodigal son went back to his father. We preach six services during seven hours of ministry, and rarely have a service without life changing decisions being made. Over the ten years this book encompasses, our ministry team has seen several thousand men accept the Lord, and even more rededicate their lives. We have been having a revival through a moving of the Holy Spirit. Only the moving of the Holy Spirit can quicken hearts and cause broken men to be made new creatures.

From the process of serving the Lord behind razor wire, I’ve learned what is necessary to be able to find freedom. This process is given in Ten Years inside Shelton Prison (Ten Years). Finding freedom follows the same steps, whether a person is enslaved by addictions on the outside or living behind razor wire on the inside.

When a person is enslaved, they need to understand: First, why people go to prison and then what terrorism is, because that is what is waiting for them. A prisoner must learn how to deal with the reality of a destroyed and endangered life. Secondly, people need instruction that will build a foundation that will give them security. This instruction is much like a ladder that they can begin to climb over the walls of what is imprisoning and enslaving them. Essential information, accepted and followed, leads to health and health leads to freedom.

People must grow in good mental health or they will stay imprisoned or reoffend, once they escape their imprisonment. God’s definition of good mental health is considered in chapter 7. After understanding what the core of mental health is, a person can climb one more rung up the ladder toward escaping their prison and finding freedom. Once a person comprehends, with their heart and mind, that health comes from Jesus and understands what healing faith is, they are on the top rungs of the ladder and ready to jump into freedom. Once people are free they find a new garden, The Garden of Salvation, which is described in chapter 10. They also have experiences, such as finding beauty in other races which is described in chapter 11 in Rainbow Grains. I found this beauty myself, lying on a beach in Hawaii, and it changed my life.

Ten Years ends with Chosen Friends, chapter 12. Without the right kind of friends, reoffending is just around the corner.

The four parted journey found in Ten Years inside Shelton Prison also teaches how to safely and effectively serve the Lord. Even as it is said; If you can learn to survive and succeed in New York City, you can survive and succeed anywhere. People who learn the way to survive and succeed in a prison are prepared to serve the Lord anywhere. A major person in the Bible, that proves this point, is Joseph who was prepared in prison to rule over Egypt and serve God (Gen. 39 to 50). During his incarceration, Joseph matured and grew in strength and wisdom. He learned where his strength came from as he learned how to forgive.

Two appendixes have been added to the body of the procedural approach found in Ten Years. 1) Prisons of all kinds are primarily filled by Satan and his schemes. Therefore, Learning How to Resist the Devil is included. 2) Addictions are behind much of the time people spend confined, and addictions are related to family of origin deficiencies. Because of this connection, I include a portion of the syllabus from the class I teach entitled Understanding Addictions. Family of Origin Therapy (FOOT), the original version, will help anyone dealing with addictions or addictive personalities as Dr. Jesus is the professor who discovered it.

Ten Years ends with a compendia of all the itemized summaries given in the book and the page reference for each. I feel that after reading the documentary that is presented in Ten Years, some readers will want to look up key itemized summaries such as, The Colors of Response. Also, the page reference to the site for each of my ten poems included in Ten Years is given.

In regard to the versions of the Bible found in Ten Years, the following procedure is used: The much loved original version of the King James Version is the basis of quotations unless some of the clarifying newer versions are found to be beneficial. These versions are identified by their initials: The New American Standard Bible (NASB), the New King James Version, (NKJV) and the New International Version (NIV). The only other version used is Weymouth’s New Testament in Modern Speech (WNT), which, in my opinion, is approximately hundred years ahead of the recent modern language versions both in calendar years and accuracy to the original text.

Finally, as the rusty winner of the Bellshaw Award for Greek Scholarship and a former Greek instructor, I have taken the liberty to translate a few passages. When I take this freedom, I attempt to refer to the necessary Greek grammars and Greek lexicons.

The mental health and psychological issues that are dealt with are primarily referred to by the twenty-five years that I was a professor of Psychology and a licensed Psychotherapist. I give a few thoughts and examples from the field of Psychology, such as definitions for mental health. If a person chooses between Academic Psychology and Biblical Theology, let the choice be God’s opinion, which is found in the inspired manual of life, the Bible.

INTRODUCTION

Rev. Robert L. Segress, ThM, PhD, LMHT, LMFT (Retired)

Ten years ago I started being blessed inside a prison. I had been retired for five years and found I was bored. The twenty-five years I had spent practicing as a full-time mental health therapist were beginning to fade from my heart and mind. I thanked the Lord that I no longer lived, as I had done, in a world of emotional trauma and pain. That world had been awfully hard on my blood pressure and left lingering results.

After we retired, my wife and I traveled for a few years, and we were so grateful to do things that were only fantasies during our working years. We had a flying above the world experience. We went to places such as Austria, where we slowly walked around the lake where The Sound of Music was made. We also walked in the Australian Outback at 5:00 a.m. with the first rays of the sun shining over Ayers Mountain, which we had climbed the day before. A flock of pink cockatoos flew ten feet above our heads making beautiful sounds. How could we not hold hands and praise the Lord?

However, boredom was setting in much the same way that concrete sets. I learned a lot about life while working as a young carpenter for three years. The stages of concrete hardening mirror the stages of an emotion. Emotions are pliable up to the point that they set up or harden into a solid form.

For example, love grows and matures or seasons. Once love has gone through its fluid form, it becomes a solid foundation for life. Unfortunately, after love has finally cured, it develops minor cracks over time. If these cracks aren’t attended to, they grow, and the love foundation can reach the point where it has to be replaced.

After several years of traveling, my wife told me that she wanted to just keep traveling, but I noticed she seemed to be losing some of the powerful sharpness she had as a pre-sales technical manager at Microsoft. Also, I was becoming restless and dulled, so it seemed obvious to me that we needed to get involved in serving the Lord, who is the source of every good gift. We needed to give, not just receive. My wife graciously followed my lead.

One Sunday the founder of Prisoners for Christ (PFC), Greg Von Tobel, spoke at my home church. My heart felt that this was what I was looking for. I felt that I couldn’t just sit on my hands (as we used to say when I was a carpenter) for the rest of my life. Fortunately, I had been prepared to serve in prisons by my mother.

My mother was the first female chaplain at the Fresno Community Jail in the 1950s and had introduced me to going inside, which is a common term among prison ministers. She gave variations on the only verse that she ever needed: John 3:16. I had seen and heard of women being saved, women getting off their addictions, and women becoming the mothers their children were crying for. I wouldn’t be working inside prisons today if it hadn’t been for my mother’s love and example. I owe her everything for taking me inside.

I felt a prison ministry was what I had been searching for. That was fourteen years ago. I started preaching each month inside Shelton Prison, near Olympia, Washington, ten years ago. These last years have been the most fulfilling years of my life. I look forward to my monthly Shelton Fishing for Men trips with my team. We cast out our net in six services during our seven hour days. Fishing for Men comes from Jesus saying, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men in Matthew 4:19. This has turned out to be my favorite type of fishing. The days we spend fishing go by too fast sometimes and other times not fast enough.

During the last ten years my team and I have seen a revival at Shelton Prison. We have seen several thousand first-time decisions for salvation and many more for rededication. However, we are only a small part of the ministry of Prisoners for Christ, which had a reported 180,000 professions for salvation worldwide in 2011. PFC has been asked by several countries to come and serve in their prisons. Presently we serve in eight countries, including Russia, India, and Africa.

Our primary goal is to see genuine born-again experiences occur in many lives, including the prison’s staff and guards. Also, our secondary goal is that the prisoners won’t reoffend. A prime directive in our by-laws is to never conduct a service without giving an altar call. Disciplining is necessary for a child in the faith, so we also try to facilitate growth.

Sometimes I think of the many women who will not be raped and the people who will not be killed because of felons being born-again while in prison. Statistics tell us that without a salvation experience while inside, regular Bible study and church attendance, there is a 60 percent chance prisoners will reoffend. However, according to a 2003 University of Pennsylvania study, those figure falls to 8 percent with salvation and Bible study.

It was a shock the first time I walked into Shelton. The razor wire that surrounded the prison grounds made me afraid, and the guards who searched me made me feel I wasn’t in control. However, I slowly got used to being inside as time went by. Adaptation is an ability that has been built into humans by the Creator.

Even as joy can be described by a blind man, so can fear be described by the same blind man. From the beginning, I learned that what I felt inside was far more powerful than what I saw with my eyes. The isolation in a prison is a mind-numbing constant of limited choices and dull colors. Freedom no longer comes from being able to choose what clothes you will wear or where you choose to travel to that day; it comes from within. Some find freedom within a prison; some don’t and they become more bitter and stunted.

Our message is that Jesus came so each prisoner may find life and life more abundantly. Many feel that the Lord is populating His kingdom from the prisons of the world more than any other segment of the harvest field. Prisoners are at the bottom emotionally. They have nowhere to go but up. Their only other choice is to stay a bottom feeder. Prisoners are face-to-face with what they have done and its consequences. They have been found guilty, and they have no drugs or alcohol to blank their minds and hide their pain.

I also began to understand what my mother told me when I was going to be married. She said, Bobbie, if you and your wife never disagree, then one of you is not necessary. This applied to me and my team, because just having them there with me was much more important to me than always agreeing about things like how long the music part of the services should last.

Razor wire—the term for the knife like barbed wire surrounding a prison—can teach a person many lessons about life and how easily a person’s life can be controlled. A few prisoners feel nothing can control them, such as the man that the guards found hanging and bleeding to death in the razor wire. He had made it through the inner fence of the prison, but the outer fence had robbed him of so much blood that he was unable to finish escaping.

I also came to understand that choices paint pictures—some with the colors of a bright, virgin morning, and some with the colors of a dark, used cloud. Choices determine whether a person in prison lives free in his or her spirit or becomes harder and smaller inside. Choices in a prison also determine whether a person lives or