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The Father Factor in Re-entry Efforts 
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By Rev. E. Gregory Austen, Jr., M.Div.
A recent report from the Pew Center on the States has been receiving a lot of press. It reveals that more than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars, for a total prison population of 1.6 million people! In fact, America’s incarceration rate now surpasses that of all other countries for which there are reliable figures. Furthermore, reports now state that last year the United States spent $44 billion in taxes in this area alone.1 Our country has an urgent challenge before it that Christians are uniquely positioned to address: reducing the recidivism rate through effective re-entry strategies without sacrificing public safety.
The problem is huge and the barriers are many. Strategically, however, there is no more effective re-entry strategy than the facilitation of comprehensive fatherhood programming by caring people. Fatherhood programming (delivered from a secular or Christian perspective) addresses wounds that many men carry deep inside and provides a man with motivation to care about being a healthy person. Additionally, from a Christian perspective, fatherhood programming easily facilitates bringing the important topic of heart-change to the table -- that true change comes from the inside out and that we can not do this without the love and support of our Heavenly Father.
I am not trying to be overly simplistic about the significant barriers to re-entry. For example, housing, employment and other recovery support services are critical. It has been said, you need an address to get a job and you need a job to then get an address. And then, for many, there is the child support hurdle that is also connected to housing and job placement. Not all dads are “dead-beat,” some are just “dead-broke.”
Despite these challenges, there are many new technologies that show promise in reducing recidivism: GPS monitoring and tracking, risk assessment instruments, and enhanced drug and alcohol tests. Criminogenic needs assessments in particular (looking at an inmate’s propensity to either succeed or fail) are contributing greatly for matching accountability structures to the needs of individual parolees. For many, this means creative uses of electronic monitoring, intensive probation, and community service. Of note, Prison Fellowship has found that “the matching of returning inmates with a loving, Christ-centered mentor is the key to successfully staying out of prison.”2
Certainly family and community connections -- including good mentors and father-figures -- are keys to reducing recidivism. Many states and community organizations find that fatherhood programming also strengthens these family and community ties, especially those between an inmate and his children. While most re-entry efforts are focused on post-release strategies, fatherhood programming is unique in that it is foundational and is best implemented as a pre-release strategy and then integrated into all post-release efforts. This is because fatherhood programming addresses a man at his most “primitive” vulnerability -- a place where many need healing -- and can provide him with motivation and purpose for all other educational and rehabilitative initiatives (housing, getting a job, staying off drugs, establishing a supportive community, etc.).
About half of all male inmates are fathers and 100% of them had a father -- whether he was present or not. One of the greatest barriers to successful re-entry is “the father wound.” Difficult to capture on evidence-based assessments, this wound, left unaddressed, stands in the way of the self-awareness and empathy necessary for a healthy life. When a man is abused or abandoned by his father, pain and disequilibrium lodge themselves in his psyche. Additionally, many men have serious existential questions related to not even knowing who their father was or is.
One illustration of how this happens is portrayed vividly in a 2005 interview with former heavyweight boxing champion, Mike Tyson. Thirty-nine years of age at the time, the article said:
“He is anything but at peace. Confused and humiliated after a decadent lifestyle left him with broken relationships, shattered finances and a reputation in ruin, the fighter cannot hide his insecurities, stacked as high as his legendary knockouts. He frets about his place in this world -- where he comes from, where he’s headed and how the life and times of Michael Gerard Tyson will play out. ‘I’ll never be happy,’ he says. ‘I believe I’ll die alone. I would want it that way. I’ve been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain. I’m really lost, but I’m trying to find myself… I’m really a sad, pathetic case… My whole life has been a waste -- I’ve been a failure…’”3
The article goes on to describe Tyson as a divorced father of six who “has doubts and questions beyond legacy. He is angry and still doesn’t know the identity of his real father…” As John Eldredge pointed out in his best-seller Wild at Heart, “Every boy, in his journey to become a man, takes an arrow in the center of his heart, in the place of his strength. Because the wound is rarely discussed and even more rarely healed, every man carries a wound. And the wound is nearly always given by the father.”4
Although fathers are not the primary contributor of the “wound” in all instances, the connection is especially evident in prisons. Approximately 70 percent of men in prison come from fatherless homes.5 Additionally, 85 percent of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes.6 To provide rehabilitative services and benefits to these men and boys without seriously addressing the father wound, then, is to leave a man lost, unhealed, and carrying significant baggage. For many men this makes it difficult -- if not impossible -- to go where they need to go.
From a Christian perspective, what is not transformed is transmitted. Currently eight out of ten of the 2 million children of incarcerated fathers end up in prison.7 Ex. 20:4b, says this: “I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations.” There is a sowing and reaping effect related to sin, and it hurts children. There are family systems, even communities, that are caught in what is sometimes referred to as a generational curse. The “sins of the fathers” and mothers affect us profoundly, much more than we would all care to admit. We each bring our own set of baggage. Whether this baggage is passed on spiritually, biologically, psychologically, or through a combination of all three, the reality that it is passed on, barring God’s mercy, cannot be denied.
The latter part of the Exodus passage cited above gives hope: “showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commands.” And that is the exciting thing to know about ministry from a Christian perspective: You can participate in the transformation of lives, introducing them to the mercy of the Father and inviting them into a life of grateful obedience to His life-changing ways. You can be part of breaking the cycle of sin for a new generation!
Addressing the father wound also provides a wonderful bridge to connect lost hearts that often bear the wounds of earthly fathers with the healing and transforming grace of the Heavenly Father. In fact, growing up without an involved, responsible and committed dad creates a barrier to an individual’s understanding and appreciation of the love of God as expressed in the gospel (Mal. 4:6a; Matt. 7:11; 2 Cor. 5:19). As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) said, “Human fatherhood gives us an anticipation of what God is. But when human fatherhood does not exist, when it is experienced only as a biological phenomenon without its human or spiritual dimensions, all statements about God the Father are empty. That is why the crisis of fatherhood we are living in today is an element, perhaps the most important, threatening man in his humanity.”8
As Christian practitioners like you address father absence and promote father involvement, you are preparing rich soil in which the gospel can grow.
There are so many great things being done in communities by faith-based and non faith-based groups. But the outcomes are multiplied when God is brought into the picture. And there is something exciting when life-change takes on an eternal life of its own. When God gets involved there are implications for this life and the next. One of the things that Christian practitioners share in common is the belief that, “The condition of life sought for by human beings through the ages is attained in the quietly transforming friendship of
Jesus.”9 What a joy and privilege you will have to intentionally invite men and dads into eternal friendship with their Heavenly Father through Christ!
Again, as mentioned above, family and community connections are key to reducing recidivism, and many states and community organizations find that fatherhood programming, such as InsideOut Dad™ developed by National Fatherhood Initiative (www.fatherhood.org), strengthens family and community ties. InsideOut Dad™ is currently the most comprehensive program of its kind in the country (it is being run in nearly every state), and is part of standardized reentry programming in ten states and counting.
This month, NFI will release a Christian version of InsideOut Dad™— InsideOut Dad™ Christian — to best serve churches and faith-based organizations with prison ministry and aftercare efforts. Developed in collaboration with Prison Fellowship, InsideOut Dad™ Christian is an important tool for faith-based communities to reduce recidivism.
InsideOut Dad™ Christian contains a robust and unique set of fatherhood modules that include 12 core sessions and 26 optional sessions to allow facilitators to tailor the curriculum to meet the unique needs of different fathers in different settings. Also included is a separate reentry module that helps prepare inmates to successfully reenter society.
In addition, InsideOut Dad Christian™ contains a wealth of biblical content, with ten core, foundational Christian concepts integrated into each of the sessions. At the request of practitioners, we've included homework to reinforce these concepts and the specific goals of each session. These “Reaching In/Reaching Out” exercises appear in the Fathering Handbook for all 38 sessions.
If you have any questions about InsideOut Dad™ Christian, feel free to contact the author, NFI’s Director of Corrections Programming and the point person for NFI’s Christian-based efforts, at gausten@fatherhood.org or 856.327.8055.
1 New York Times, “Prison Nation,” March 10, 2008.
2 Statement made by PFM President, Mark Early in his daily Breakpoint commentary “Ready or Not:The Second Chance Act,” March 13, 2008.
3 USA Today, “Tyson: ’My whole life has been a waste’” June 2, 2005.
4 John Eldredge, Wild at Heart (Nelson: Nashville), p. 60.
5 Relevant magazine interview with Rick Johnson, author of Better Dads, Stronger Sons and founder of Better Dads ‘A Fatherless Generation: Coming to Terms with the Loss” 6.09.08
6 Fulton Co. Georgia, Texas Dept. of Correction
7 Cited by Bob Hamrin in 6.09.08 Tip of the Month from Greatdads.org
8 Cited from a speech given in Palermo, Italy in March of 2000
9 Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (Harper: San Francisco) p. 124.
Copyright © 2008 Christian Association for Prison Aftercare. All Rights Reserved.
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