Every time the Home Secretary appears on the news my heart sinks. Michael Howard is already this century’s most prolific British criminal legislator. Despite heavy criticism from the judicial system he seems determined on churning out law after law aimed at keeping prisoners in prison forever. I suspect he will be unimpressed with the scripture chosen for "Prisoners Week", which begins today. The text, chosen by this country’s prison chaplains, is: "remember those in prison as if you were there with them " (Heb 13:3).

I hope Michael Howard shifts uneasily at reading that text. And I hope we will too. Because it urgently needs our consideration and application.

"Remember those in prison " If we’re honest we prefer not to. We like to imagine the walls keep "them" in and "us" out. Those sentenced to prison are not though ordinarily creatures of evil; despite what the media and Michael Howard would sometimes have us believe. The few I’ve visited in prison have needed support and encouragement. They did not need condemnation. To remember them is not a Christian option. It is an obligation.

"Remember those in prison.. " To do so is to participate in divine work. Jesus was insistent that to visit someone in prison was to visit him (Matt 25:31-46). To remember them is to begin to visit them. To remember them before God is to begin a relationship where we are "there with them. "

An international gathering of prison chaplains, meeting recently in Poland, called for the raising of public awareness. The emphasis in criminal justice needs, they said, to be less on punishment and more on reconciliation and restoration. Crime they described as a "wounded triangular relationship" between offender, victim and society. All in that triangle need the restoration of their dignity and an inner healing. If we reject the collective wisdom of these chaplains we ensure the socia1 wound stays unhealed. If, as they ask, we all become involved by "remembering those in prison as if there with them" that social wound begins to heal. Much is at stake more so than perhaps we or Michael Howard might first realise.

DJG