BlackPhi Webitorial Ramblings

News & Comment From A Christian's Perspective

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Reducing Reoffending Rates - Posted 29th July, 2006

Last week's posting about InnerChange was mostly prompted by my dislike of misleading half-truths; nevertheless reducing reoffending rates among prisoners is a very important issue. According to New Scientist about half of the US's 2.2 million prison population are clinically addicted to drugs or alcohol when they enter prison:-

Even worse, most drug-dependent criminals are released back into society with the same problems that got them locked up in the first place. Clearly, the punitive jail regime that sees few of these prisoners treated for their addiction is not working.

InnerChange's ideologically driven approach doesn't help, but that doesn't mean nothing can be done. Last Monday the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) published guidelines on approaches which have been properly shown to work. The following charts indicate what can be achieved:

The big difference between these results and those for InnerChange is the reoffending rate for those who drop out of the program: on InnerChange these people had higher reoffending rates than those who didn't even start the program. Actually even this chart has a distortion, particularly noticable in the figure for drug-free at 5 years after dropping out of the program. This shows a surprising jump ... until you realise that these programs are voluntary. The people who go on them will be those who are motivated to give up their drugs - which is an important first step. This shows how carefully you need to look at statistics; it also shows just how bad the InnerChange results really were.

Getting these results is expensive - roughly the same as the cost of reimprisoning the people when they reoffend - but the financial cost of the extra crimes committed without treatment is about ten times that (not to mention the emotional costs of crime and the psychological cost of the fear of crime).

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Womad - Posted 28th July, 2006

To be honest, I wasn't that keen on going to Womad this evening. I've been overdoing things this week, and I got very little sleep last night, so I really didn't feel like bothering. I'm glad I did though, it was fun.

This was my first visit to Womad (World Music and Dance is what the acronym stands for, I think). It seemed to me half craft fair, half Greenbelt Festival and a quarter Mombassa side road (less of the latter partly because the stall holders didn't come out to encourage me to buy stuff, but mostly because the distinctive smell of East Africa was missing - it's strange that I cannot directly remember what the smell is like, but when something reminds me of Africa, like tonight, the absence of the smell is really strong). Of course, unless you have been to a British craft fair, taken part in a Greenbelt and visited East Africa this description probably tells you little or nothing :-)> . Womad is *not* like Reading Rock - which is more or less in the same place a month later - not even a little bit.

I enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere and the variety of people: I saw folk from eight weeks to eighty years. There was a food stall run by the Real Meat Sausage Company cheek-by-jowl with a strictly vegetarian stall. There were lots of stalls selling exotic clothes, so by this evening there were plenty of people wearing exotic clothes; some looking very nice, others very strange. I came home with a tee-shirt for my daughter and some liquorice-based sweets for anyone in the family willing to risk the strange-looking colours (actually the dodgiest-looking one was the liquorice and melon, which I ate while waiting for Tiger Moth - headed by Ian Anderson, editor of Folk Roots - it was strange but more-ish).

There was a stall full of world music CDs - I've never seen so much in one place before. Unfortunately my knowledge of world music is just not up to that sort of choice, so I wimped out and didn't get anything. Once I'd seen the Gotan Project (using 'seen' in a figurative way - there was a large crowd and my eyesight is iffy at that range: they looked about as clear as the picture above to me), I went back but, when I eventually found them again, they were shut, so I'll have to try the internet.

All-in-all an enjoyable evening - I'm glad I went - but now it's one in the morning, my legs hurt, and I'm really not going to feel good on the morning after. Still, it's a fact of life that actions have consequences, and I can live with these (I hope).

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InnerChange or Outer Propaganda? - Posted 22nd July, 2006

There was an article in Britain's Daily Mail recently about the stopping of a pilot program at Dartmoor to reduce re-offending rates among prisoners by teaching them conservative Christian values and providing followup support when they leave prison. The article implied that the program had been shown to be successful in reducing reoffending rates and that it had been stopped because it might cause offence:-

A religious help scheme for prisoners has been scrapped in case it offends those of other faiths and homosexuals. Organisers of the InnerChange course at Dartmoor jail were told their traditional message was discriminatory and did not conform to 'diversity' policy.

I don't have a great deal of trust in the Daily Mail, to be blunt, so I did a bit of research. The first thing I found was that actually the story was in the Daily Telegraph nearly a fortnight previously, in its opinion column. I think this is a much better article, and provides a lot more information, including some background on InnerChange itself:-

In the United States in the 1990s, Chuck Colson, who had been in prison for his part in the Watergate scandal in the Nixon White House, invented a programme called InnerChange. The idea was "the transformation of lives through the love of God". In several states, including Texas, then under the governorship of George W Bush, prisoners went on a course that introduced them to role models from the Bible, learning from parables such as that of the Prodigal Son or the Lost Sheep. The programmes also provided what is so often lacking - follow-up after release. Reoffending fell dramatically. In Texas, it is claimed that recidivism dropped from 55 per cent to eight per cent for those who took part in InnerChange.

It certainly sounds like a good course - reoffending is an obviously important target in reducing crime. And we all know how politically correct the establishment is, don't we? Then I found this post, on Anglican Mainstream, giving a response by the Director General of the Prison Service to these allegations:-

Sir - The InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) programme at HMP Dartmoor did not fail to gain approval only because of matters of diversity (Comment, July Eighth). ... The figures quoted on reoffending rates have been shown by a number of academics to be inaccurate. There is some evidence that those who attend an IFI programme and do not complete it are slightly more likely to reoffend than those who have never been on one.

He adds that "A number of other Christian programmes have already been approved through the PSO."

Why the different views on reoffending rates? See this article, on Slate, for an explanation. In summary, the figures from IFI themselves only count those who complete the program, and the followup, and get a job. Unsurprisingly, if you think about it, their reoffending rate is low. If you take all of those who entered the program, though, you find that actually the reoffending rate was slightly higher. In other words use of this program increased overall reoffending rates!

But when you look carefully at the Penn study, it's clear that the program didn't work. The InnerChange participants did somewhat worse than the controls: They were slightly more likely to be rearrested and noticeably more likely (24 percent versus 20 percent) to be reimprisoned.

You can see why I don't have much trust in the Daily Mail. But this is more than just poor reporting. This is equivalent to 'Crying Wolf' - there are many really good faith-based initiatives around, some of which genuinely do hit problems with aggressively anti-religious bureaucrats. Usually a bit of publicity, or escalation to a higher level, sorts things out, but false stories like this can only make things harder.

There is a wonderful place near Reading, called Yeldall Manor, which genuinely makes a difference in many men's lives - Christian and non-Christian - as they struggle to overcome addiction. They have more than enough problems in carrying out their work, including bureaucratic hassles; the last thing they need is care-less reporting adding to their burden.

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War Criminals - Posted 15th July, 2006

The Israeli air force has killed at least 20 civilian refugees today, including 15 children, in a convoy fleeing the southern Lebanese town of Marwahin. Local police say that the refugees were fleeing after Israeli loudspeaker vans warned civilians to leave the area.

According to Reuters Israeli forces have killed at least 32 civilians so far today, during a series of attacks on roads, ports and petrol stations (including in Christian areas of the country).

The death toll from 4 days of Israeli attacks on Lebanon has risen to at least 100 people, all but 4 of them civilians. The US president has declined to urge Israel to stop these attacks, I assume because he doesn't think Arab lives matter very much.

Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians started after two Israeli soldiers were captured by Hizbollah forces on Wednesday. Hizbollah, meanwhile, have attacked Israeli towns and villages with Katyusha rockets, wounding at least 10 Israeli civilians.

Hizbollah's action followed Israeli attacks on the Palestinian population in Gaza, where more than 60 people have been killed, many of them children, following the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants. This is in addition to the deliberate destruction by Israeli forces of the civilian infrastructure in Gaza, which is illegal under international law.

Israel last invaded Lebanon in 1978, finally fully withdrawing in May 2000. Whilst they were there Israel was blamed for the massacres of civilians by Phalangist militia in 1982, within the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, in West Beirut, which were under Israeli control at the time.

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death's construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh Lord yeah

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight
They leave that all to the poor

Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait 'till their judgment day comes

Lyric by Black Sabbath

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Poor Old Hammy! - Posted 14th July, 2006

[Imagine the theme tune to Tales of the Riverbank, in a minor key, with a descending bass line. Hammy the hamster is dead, but someone's dug him up and made him play a concert - with all the energy of a vampire ball on a midsummer's day]. In other words, I have just been to a totally rubbish concert, featuring The Hamsters.

The Hamsters are supposed to be a blues/rock band, specialising in rythmn & blues (the old sort), Hendrix and ZZ Top. Imagine rythmn & blues with a totally flat rythmn and absolutely no heart or soul - that was The Hamsters, tonight at least. And Jimi Hendrix must be spinning in his grave - I suspect The Hamsters' guitarist had all the right notes in the right order. but for Hendrix the notes were a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Hendrix was always expressive, always exciting - The Hamsters were neither.

This was deeply frustrating, because I was feeling very drained, and guitar-led blues or rock was what I really, really needed, deep down in my soul. It wasn't just me being negative, either: I think only one person in the audience showed any animation - one old feller with his head in the speakers, twitching randomly. After the break it seemed to be only the fact that volume was too high for conversation that convinced people to turn and listen. To be fair there was a bit more energy after the break - and all three performers seemed to be following the same beat, which helped - but it still wasn't going to be enough to meet my need. So I walked out and headed for the Purple Turtle to see if there was any live music there. There wasn't, so I headed across town toward an Irish themed pub that often has Irish folk playing (I was desperate - nothing against Irish folk, but in a theme pub in England ... ).

I didn't get there. In the middle of Reading is a pub called the Pitcher & Piano - it's a silly name, but audible from across the street was some very loud, very energetic electric blues. They were holding a 'Blues Club' and tonight featured the Handsome Boys. They were brilliant! The pub was half empty, astonishingly enough, so I went in, got myself a pint of Guinness (about the only beer name the bar staff could reasonably be expected to lip-read), and sat down for ¾ hour of brilliant music. Only ¾ hour! Out of a whole evening! Is that a glass mostly empty, or a glass just a bit full? I was thirsty enough that it met a need.

They played electric blues, with energy and passion. They played Led Zeppelin's Black Dog, but in a contemporary style. They played Santana's Black Magic Woman, note for note as far as I could tell, then suddenly broke into a free-for-all of extemporisation. They had guitar and keyboard doing blues call & response. They had a rock-solid bass player. And they had the sort of drummer who must be a stone lighter by the end of the evening. They had some really hot ladies dancing to them, and some really dumb young men not dancing! Except for one African feller, who spent some time trying to get people up to dance (he even had me dancing for about 2 minutes), but eventually gave up and just enjoyed the ladies. All-in-all a great evening, but so short! So much time wasted! But far better than nothing.

Did you see The Hamsters last night? Did you think they were really good? Or did you find them a disappointment too? Or maybe you were at the Pitcher & Piano: how did you find it? Or do you know where the Handsome Boys are playing next? Whatever, do let me know.

Reading With His Eyes Shut? - Posted 9th July, 2006

I was browsing an old post on the Shades of Gray blog earlier this week, about the emerging church. She had included a report from the Baptist Press, which quoted one R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., attacking the emerging church in general and Brian McLaren in particular.

'Emerging Church' is a catchall term for a whole range of new approaches to being church: ranging from a multimedia reworking of Orthodox liturgies to Rob Bell's passion for helping non-religious people connect with the Bible. This Wikipedia article, which is probably as good a description as any, highlights four key values: Authenticity, Missional Living, Narrative Theology and Christ-likeness. The term is often associated with a rejection of 'modernist' approaches to Christianity, which are seen as having painted thenselves into sterile corners over recent decades. Modern evangelicalism and theological liberalism alike are criticised for this. Brian McLaren is seen as a leading figure in the emerging church, partly as a result of his book A New Kind of Christian (which I've just started reading).

The Southern Baptist Convention, in which Mohler is a prominent figure, is a large, conservative protestant grouping of US churches. They recently (2004) left the Baptist World Alliance because the latter weren't theologically conservative enough for them. Mohler is against Roman Catholics, against Moslems, against homosexuals, against female church leaders, against ... well, you get the idea. He also opposes post-modernism, the emergent church and Brian McLaren (unsurprisingly really, as Mohler exemplifies many of the traits that the emergent churches are turning away from). What I find remarkable, as a Christian who believes in the truth of the Bible, is the main reason he gives for being against them:

Mohler argues that McLaren's claim to uphold historic Christian faith and simultaneously avoid articulating truth in propositional form is self-contradictory ... "As a postmodernist, he considers himself free from any concern for propositional truthfulness, and simply wants the Christian community to embrace a pluriform understanding of truth as a way out of doctrinal conflict and impasse." ...
Mohler concludes that McLaren and other leaders in the Emergent Church represent "a significant challenge to biblical Christianity" ... "Unwilling to affirm that the Bible contains propositional truths that form the framework for Christian belief, this movement argues that we can have Christian symbolism and substance without those thorny questions of truthfulness that have so vexed the modern mind," Mohler writes.

The question that springs immediately to my mind is: has Mohler actually read his Bible? Has he actually looked at the things Jesus said and the way he said them? It says in the Bible that Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables: "he did not say anything to them without using a parable". Even when he went on to explain his teaching to his disciples he said things like: "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field ... Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant ... Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net ... ". In propositional terms this is nonsense, yet when Jesus asked his disciples if they understood, they said "Yes".

The ironic thing is that propositional truth is more commonly associated with Logical Positivism, a reductionist philosophy commonly used by atheists to attack Christianity. It's a hard-line version of Aristotlean logic - every truth can be expressed in terms of statements which are either true or false. There is nothing other than these two and there is no such thing as a multi-faceted truth - one that has to be looked at from different sides before you can begin to grasp it. It is the sort of logic that the pharisees used to try to trap Jesus. The world is just not like that, and nor is the Bible.

The really frightening thought, though, is that Mohler must read his Bible. Yet he still doesn't see how his own statements contradict that Bible. Somehow he filters out everything he doesn't want to hear, lest it challenge his own preconceptions. Do I do that? I try not to, but ...

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I Believe in Rainbows - Posted 9th July, 2006

I found some interesting stuff on Pastor Pat's Shades of Gray blog ("Life is never as clear as black and white: life is found at the margins within the shades of gray") and was planning to blog about it. The problem is I keep getting distracted by the name of her blog, so I'll post something on that first to get it out of the way. Note that I mean no disrespect to Pat at all: her blog is excellent and I'm sure the name has resonances for her and for others (and she likes Evanescence!). Nevertheless, possibly because I trained as a physicist, I find 'black and white' vs 'shades of grey' a false dichotomy - I believe in the God who makes rainbows. When I walk up the road where I live, I can look at the incredible range of shades of green in the trees and feel a sense of religious awe (especially on a Sunday morning after a particularly awe-less church service!).

The great thing about rainbows for a physicist is that you look at a rainbow and say "Wow!". Then you wonder: how does it work? So you look more closely and you find a rainbow is generated by an ever-changing myriad of tiny droplets of water, each one gleaming its own brilliant spectrum of colour. Then you say "Wow!" again, even more fervently.

Biologists/naturalists have a different perpective. When I was a kid, we lived for three years in Kenya. There you can visit the game reserves and see some truly beautiful animals. They live in a kill and be killed environment, but that is not what troubles me. What really bothers me is when you look closely at the animals and see the parasites. Parasites on the skin, parasites under the skin, parasites eating their way through the skin. Parasites in the intestines, and the lungs, and the brain. Parasites literally eating them alive. That's even before you start looking at the microbes, or the tiny wasps. You have to realize that the world as it currently exists is no paradise.

I believe in light and shade. I believe in an infinite range of colours: some bright and some somber. I pity anyone trapped in a flat boring black and white world. And I don't believe in grey at all - in essence it's an optical illusion. Sorry, Pat.

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Back to Work ... Or Else? - Posted 9th July, 2006

The UK government published plans last week to bring an end to Incapacity Benefit. In its current form Incapacity Benefit is a contributory benefit intended to replace the earnings lost when someone becomes incapable of working for an extended period of time, due to illness or injury. Basically it is a form of (compulsory) health insurance - we pay National Insurance contributions while we work, and the state pays us Incapacity Benefit if we can't work. The government wants to save £1b per year by getting a million sick or disabled people back into work. Getting people who can work back into the workplace is generally a laudable aim ... if you trust the government ... and the civil servants ... and the private companies they hire to do their dirty work.

I was on Incapacity Benefit, for a couple of years, ten years ago, when I first got CFS/ME. Actually getting the benefit was a nightmare - if the condition didn't fit their pigeon-holes then the bureaucrats simply refused tjhe benefit and left you to argue it out on appeal. The appeals process was exhausting - it would have been fine if I was well, but since I wasn't it was incredibly difficult, and almost certainly set back my recovery by months, possibly years. I can't praise the Citizens Advice Bureau too highly for the help and support they give. The doctors who agreed to be a part of this process and accepted government targets to reject as many claimants as possible, on the other hand, seemed to me to have sold out on their morals. I was lucky: I have skills which allow me to earn enough working part time, so I was able to get off the benefit before the government review cycle meant going through it all again. The fact that I had put orders of magnitude more money into the system, through National Insurance, than I needed to take out in benefit just adds insult to injury.

Not working can be deeply demoralising, so helping people find jobs that they can do should be a good thing. Except that helping the long term sick back into work is likely to cost money - and the government is wanting to save money with these changes, not spend more. So will they forego their saving to do the job properly, or just bully claimants into further ill-health and poverty?

Meanwhile the government hires private insurance companies, such as UNUMProvident, to squeeze as many people out of the system as possible. In the case of CFS, ME Action UK have compiled a report highlighting concerns about conflicts of interest involving the government's DWP handbook entry on CFS (which is used to evaluate benefit claims) and the commercial work of the DWP's medical advisors, including those who are involved with UNUMProvident.

My own experience of the workings of Incapacity Benefit leaves me cynical about government claims that its reforms will benefit those most in need. I hope I'm wrong.

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