Prison Diary: Inside Stories

By Olive Lawson

This is the inspirational diary of a retired schoolteacher in her seventies who has found a ministry to those incarcerated in a men’s prison. Olive’s honest account of her interactions with convicted criminals will grip her readers. She challenges us to look for the inherent goodness in every person. She makes us question whether each of us may also have a significant ministry that is only limited by our availability

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kereru Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Aug 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9780473486969

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Copyright Page

‘Prison Diary – Inside Stories’

Written by Olive Lawson

First Edition published 2018 by Olive Lawson

This Second edition © July 2019 Kereru Publishing Ltd

Text Copyright © Olive Lawson

The authors assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the New Zealand Copyright Act 1994

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Except as provided by the New Zealand Copyright Act 1994 no part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a  retrieval system in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright owner

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa)

ISBN 978-0-473-42941-6 (Print)

ISBN Number 978-0-473-48697-6 (Kindle)

ISBN Number 978-0-473-48698-3 (PDF)

ISBN Number 978-0-473-48696-9 (EPUB)

Cover Photo: Cover design © 2019 Caleb Gamman - Caleb Gamman Ltd

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and with a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Kereru Publishing Ltd

29 The Circle

Whangaparaoa 0930

New Zealand

[e-mail]

www.kererupublishing.com

A note from Kereru Publishing

Our dream is to provide resources to engage, encourage and inspire a generation of seed dispersers for the Christian faith and to equip groups of Christians together to be church in this changing world. 

With eBook technology, we can now make available resources written and published in New Zealand for people all over the world to enjoy at minimal cost.  Our resources are tried, tested and come highly recommended.  In agreement with our authors we are offering our books at reasonable prices, in the hope that they are affordable for most people. 

We don’t mind if you print off a single copy of this ebook so that you can refer to it on paper if that is your preference. However, if you are using a copy of this book and you know that you did not purchase it, it is likely that your copy is stolen.  It has been passed on to you illegally by a forwarded email or a printed out copy of the eBook.  If this is so, we’d like you to visit our website and download a copy for yourself.  This allows us to continue to produce resources at such a low cost on an ongoing basis.

If you’d like to be able to print or distribute multiple copies please get in touch by email [e-mail].

On behalf of everyone at Kereru Publishing and the author of this book, thank you for purchasing from us. May you be encouraged and inspired in your faith journey.

Andrew Gamman & Caroline Bindon

Kereru Publishing Ltd

www.kererupublishing.com

This book is dedicated to all those prisoners who serve their sentence with courage, remorse and hope for a better future.

Thank you to Barbara Taylor, Julie Kennedy, Pauline Taylor and my loving husband, Don Rowlands, for support and encouragement.

Names and places have been changed to protect identities.

I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me… Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.

Matthew 25:36, 40.

Introduction

Sitting at the dining room table, wondering what I should do with my life, I flicked open the Bible. My eyes fell on these lines:

"Remember those who are in prison, as though you

were in prison with them."      Hebrews 13:3.

I pondered over this verse for some time. How could I, an older pākehā retired female teacher gain access to prison? What could I do? I would like to help prisoners, but how could I go about it?

Ten years prior my youngest son, Nicholas, died from a drug overdose. He was twenty nine years old, engaged to be married and an addict in remission. He had been clean, to my knowledge, for nearly two years following time in Queen Mary Hospital in Hanmer. My grief at his almost unexpected death was boundless. I tried to deal with it in so many ways: prayer, writing, a memorial seat, acknowledging anniversaries, talking about addiction at a meeting, and walking the Camino in Spain; a pilgrimage in memory of Nick. My husband was patient and kind and one day remarked that he thought I enjoyed working with young men because it helped me in my healing process. His words rang true in my heart. I knew he was right. I knew it was only through the grace of God that Nicholas had not ended up in prison. Whenever I saw young mums with little boys in tow at the supermarket I often felt like calling to them; Watch out! Enjoy them! They may not be with you long! Take good care how you bring them up. At the school where I taught I devoted myself to many at risk teenagers in my care. I really wanted to help young men walk a safe path.

The following Sunday, after the usual church service, during cup of tea time, a woman I scarcely knew, sat beside me.

Would you like to join a church team that takes a prison service monthly? she said.

Yes, I replied without a moment of hesitation. And so began my prison ministry.

It took time to get my volunteer identification card. I had to attend a training course and have a thorough police check. We were constantly warned during training of the dangers of ‘getting got’ which in prison terms means being taken in, manipulated and blackmailed in some illegal way. The short films we saw showed the frightening ease with which a cunning prisoner can manoeuvre a naïve volunteer. We were cautioned about the dangers of giving out personal information; where you live, the names of people in your family, your age, your phone number, your surname and so on.

My first visit was traumatic. I returned home emotionally drained and completely exhausted. I was amazed that only a fifteen minutes drive from our comfortable home in a beautiful suburb hundreds of men were confined in claustrophobic concrete cells far from the beauties of nature, suffering a kind of purgatory I could scarcely imagine. The knowledge helped me enjoy all the small freedoms of every day. A moment in the garden, hopping into my car on a whim and buzzing off to see someone, shopping, going to bed whenever I felt like it, enjoying wide open spaces, walking away from a person who was annoying me… prisoners cannot do any of these things. Prison volunteering reminded me that I was free to do and experience such small joys and achievements while the young men were denied all this. On each visit fresh things disturbed me. No visit was ever the same. But I was never going to stop. I felt that perhaps in some small way I could assist the young men, or at least some of them.

Entering through the gate house the first few times was not pleasant. First the identification card is electronically checked, shoes removed, belts, jewellery and jackets and Bibles go through the x-ray machine. This machine is far more particular than those at the airport. Time and again I have been compelled to go through more than once. It’s because I have left my watch on, or my jeans have extra studs or there’s a metal clasp on my top. Once my husband was refused entry and finally had to remove his metal rimmed glasses. We can take with us paper, but no pens, or pencils, compact discs, memory sticks, or flowers.

Next we enter a large stainless steel room with surveillance cameras where shoes and belts are put on, clothing adjusted and the exit button pushed to allow us to enter the prison grounds. I always feel a pang of sadness leaving this room for directly outside there is a fleet of dilapidated pushchairs lined up for visiting mothers. It’s a long walk to most parts of the prison and these tatty pushchairs are for any mums with babies or toddlers.

Returning home one day particularly emotionally drained, my husband suggested that it might help if I kept a diary writing down what occurred at each visit. Thus began this ‘Prison Diary’.

The diary tells some of the story of my three years of prison volunteering which both challenged and deepened my faith. The courage of some of the men against all odds gave me hope. This diary is a personal record of both my journey and those of a few of the prisoners with whom I worked and talked.

First Year

February

Chapel Service

My First Service

I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. After the long walk through the prison grounds surrounded by grim buildings, the long concrete corridors, the high grilled gates on time alarms, stepping into the chapel is a refreshing change: a breath of fresh air, an oasis in the desert, a sanctuary. Carpeted in rich blue with cream walls, I was first struck by the huge carved Māori Jesus on the wall right front some seven feet tall. He has distinctly Māori facial features looking out at you through paua shell eyes. On a two step raised dais there is a small unadorned altar with a plain wooden cross. Behind the altar there are two ‘wings’ of plain stained glass, red and green. This room has colour, which