The Role of Religious Groups in Offender Reformation: A Study of the Port Harcourt Prison in Rivers State, Nigeria

Introduction Prison is generally perceived as very negative, the receptacle of society's worst and wayward members. Yet, for whatever other reasons society imprisons its felons, an expectation (if not implicit aim) has been to return them to civil life in a better state than they were before--to rehabilitate them (Bolkas 2000). The rehabilitation of prisoners has always been vital, though a quarrelsome aspect of the modern prison system. Indeed, the western model of the prison, the penitentiary, was first founded by religious (Christian) leaders who wanted to reform the offender through a strict administration that included religious edification. Ever since the apparent failure of these early reformatory measures, there have been ongoing attempts to alter the criminal character by using similarly intrusive techniques, only now under the guise of rehabilitation (Bolkas 2000). However, the notion of rehabilitation appeared doomed. In his landmark research, Martinson (1974) rehabilitation confirmed what many believed. The study concluded that with few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts had no appreciable effect on recidivism. A history of this apparent failure, however, does not appear to have daunted the rehabilitative ideal, which remains a central and enduring principle of imprisonment (Gendreau and Ross 1987; White 1989; Gartner, O' Connor, Larson, Write, & Young, 1990). The fundamental problem is that corrections/prisons services are meant to keep inmates, reform, re-orientate, and rehabilitate them to avoid recidivism, and empower them to be law abiding and productive members of the society on release from prison. But the situation on ground today in much of Africa is the opposite. In several African nations, not only is there no rehabilitation and empowerment, several inmates go back to crime soon after discharge from prison to terrorize the society, despite the vocational trainings (carpentry work, electrical work, shoe making etc.) and thereby return to prison to worsen the financial crisis of the prisons (Nwolise 2010). It is believed that in any rehabilitation process there should be a medium that helps an individual to develop his self-confidence and increase his social recognition. Further, it should be able to inculcate new set of values into the inmate and also develop the ability to foster social relationships. For this reason does Durkheim (1912), in his Elementary forms of religion asserts: "Religion being a cultural phenomenon can exist independently of morality; that is social or secular ethics and norms of behaviour. But if morality remains separated and distinctive from religion, if it has not derived from religion proper but remains secularistic, its value as a process of achieving social integration and solidarity will be eroded. This being the case, it becomes necessary to root morality in religion ". According to the American Correctional Association (2000), "religion plays a very vital role in the rehabilitation process as it helps to integrate the individual back into the society as he or she was before; it does not make him feel unwanted". Religious programs facilitate the development of inmate's personality. In initial interviews conducted by Gunathilake & Edirisinghe (2010:3) the researchers found out that the inmates have developed anger against the society at the initial phase of conviction. All inmates in the sample revealed that they were suffering from a psychological trauma. To counter all these psychological conditions the religious programs were of immense help to the inmates. O'Connor (1995a: 16) argues that despite its historical and practical role in the penal system religion has been a neglected variable in criminal justice research, especially research on adult criminality and reformation. Indeed, it has been neglected across the social sciences. In Nigeria, scholars have been appraising the various aspects of reformation among inmates in prisons (Attere, 2000; Okunola, 1986; Nwolise, 2010), however, these studies have not been able to exhaustively examine the effectiveness and challenges of religious groups in reforming offenders in prison. …