Intense prison ministry of this type, which presents undergraduate degrees to inmates, has been active since at least the 1990s.

The New Orleans seminary, for example, started offering courses to inmates at the Louisiana penitentiary at Angola in 1996. The seminary also is working with prisons in Georgia and Florida.

At least four other institutions, located in places such as South Carolina, Virginia and New York, are operating similar programs. At Sing Sing prison in New York, more than 100 convicts have completed a program offered by Mercy College. Of that group, 45 have been released, and not one has been put in prison again.

At Parchman, the program began in 2004 with funding from the Mississippi Baptist Convention. Inmates researched the Old Testament and the New Testament, and they received instruction on how to preach, evangelize and counsel. Those receiving degrees will try to become “missionaries” who will be allowed to transfer to other prisons to minister to inmates.

What a challenge the instructors of such courses must face. At Parchman, many of the students haven’t been in school for years. Some are dropouts, while others have a general equivalency diploma.

To the New Orleans seminary’s credit, it holds inmates to the same academic standards as it does other students. The degrees presented are not watered-down versions. Although that surely means a number of the participants are unable to keep up academically, it is also true that an inmate doesn’t need a degree to witness to other prisoners.

Burl Cain

The guest speaker at last week’s Parchman graduation ceremony was Burl Cain, the longtime warden at Angola. He said 145 prisoners there have a ministry education degree, and inmate violence there is down sharply since the program began, from 500 attacks a year to less than 100. So there is ample evidence that such programs work, both in leading individuals away from a hateful life and in leading more prison inmates away from violence.

Prison outreach is a noble calling, truly following the instructions of Jesus to do for the least among us. It can be through ambitious programs such as the ministry education going on at Parchman, or through more modest outreach efforts such as those conducted at Greenwood’s Delta Correctional Facility.

The true challenge is to reach more at-risk individuals before they go to jail, not afterward.