I have been asked to speak to you today because it is Prisoners Sunday and I am Volunteer Co-ordinator for MUDPIES, the Mothers’ Union and Diocesan Prison Initiatives. While I tried very hard to think of a joke to start this address with I couldn’t find one because being in prison isn’t very funny, so instead I will use the old line,

‘You do the crime, you pay the time’.

In other words, those who choose to commit a crime, only have themselves to blame if they end up in prison.

So what is crime? If I asked you directly you would probably say something along the lines of, ‘breaking the law’, yes?  But who makes the law?  We do. Society. Our government.  So in fact crime is a social construct because it only exists when we make laws.  We know that laws change frequently and we hear discussions about this on the news: the criminalisation and de-criminalisation of certain drugs, the raising of the age of criminal responsibility, the lowering of the age of consent. Then there is the smacking of children and assisted suicide, topics that push the mildest person into a complete frenzy when it comes to making laws about them. And do you remember when abortion was legalised?

Something that was legal yesterday might become illegal tomorrow – and vice versa - in fact we could surely be forgiven for being quite unsure of the law sometimes. Well actually – no we wouldn’t, because ignorance is not an acceptable excuse if we break the law.  And then of course, laws differ from country to country ……remember the old ‘Crime of Passion’ in France? That has been rescinded now but at one time it was not against the law in France, if, for instance, you killed your wife in a terrible rage because you unexpectedly caught her in flagrante delicto with the gardener.

And laws differ in time as well – Jesus broke the Jewish Sabbath law 2, 000 years ago by picking corn (Mark 2: 23-24), and when he healed the paralysed man he not only broke the Jewish law himself, but also told the man to carry his bed, something else forbidden on the Sabbath (John 5: 8-17). In Old Testament times, David broke the Jewish law by eating the priests’ bread and also giving it to his men because they were all hungry (Mark 2: 25-26).

Some crimes today are considered socially acceptable by many, e.g. bringing home a pen from work, making personal phone calls at the office, exceeding the speed limit. Apparently we will all break the law at least once during our lifetimes, wittingly or unwittingly!

So the law is changing all the time and can be a somewhat grey area on occasion. Consequently the 80,000 or so inmates currently being detained at her Majesty’s pleasure in England and Wales are not all desperate criminals who have done despicable things, although many have of course. The severity of the crime will determine the length of sentence, so if the prisoners have done despicable things then they often serve a very long sentence. But who serves the sentence?

Over 75,000 of those previously mentioned 80,000 prisoners are men, and both the prisons in Essex are now male establishments. Chelmsford prison takes 695 men and Bullwood Hall takes 184. That is 879 husbands, sons and fathers in prison in Essex, while their wives, children and parents wait at home.

"They also serve who only stand and wait", is a well-known line from one of Milton's Sonnets and although written in 1673, it very accurately describes the women and children who are waiting for and serving the sentence with their loved ones.

“I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me’’…..
“When, Lord, did we ever see you sick, or in prison, and visit you?’’
“I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me..... just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me!”

Some commentaries say that this reading is a parable about philanthropy, others that it is wrong to refer to it as a parable when it is not! However it is at least in part, a reading about the Last Judgement and it’s scary stuff! God is going to judge us by how kind we are to people, not by how clever we are, not by becoming a celebrity or by how much money we have, not by how many times we have prayed or by the number of holy books we have read, but by how we have responded to human need.

And this passage says 3 very specific things about this response:

1. It must be simple, like visiting somebody who is unwell, or giving a hungry person a meal, offering someone who is thirsty a drink on a very hot day or perhaps giving a warm coat to an immigrant who is shivering on a street corner, or visiting somebody in prison.

2. The second thing he says is that the motivation behind the act of kindness must be sincere, not prompted by the possibility of financial reward, or the thought of storing up a few more Brownie points to plea-bargain with at St Peter’s gate, or the promise of a knighthood because the person being helped is actually somebody famous in disguise, not for publicity ….. and not even because we know the person who is needing help. If we help merely to gain approval or praise then that is just selfishness. Any act of kindness must be altruistic, done out of pure kindness, instinctive, a gift from a loving heart. If we pass without stopping and later say, ‘But if I had known it was you, I’d have helped’, we have failed.

3. The third element of these good deeds is that any act of kindness we do for somebody else, we are doing for God. If you want to please any parent then you do something kind to or for one of their children, and since we are all God’s children any act of kindness we do for another human being will please Him.

If we can learn to help mankind through selfless generosity in the simplest things without calculation, then we will know the joy of helping Jesus Christ himself which can only broaden our faith.

Through the development of faith, we, as Christians, deepen our relationships with God and with each other, articulating and translating our faith into action. God’s love, shown through us. This faith runs like a river through the strategy of The Mothers’ Union and like water it always finds its own shape. One such shape merges into the Prison Initiatives.

Returning to those waiting women and children, imprisonment of a partner or parent can be devastating and bring with it many serious financial, emotional and social implications. When a person is sent to prison, their families and friends can suffer shame, stigma, loneliness, and financial difficulty.

A recent government study estimated that 45% of prisoners lose contact with their family whilst imprisoned, and 22% of married prisoners divorce or separate as a consequence of receiving a custodial sentence. Yet research has shown that families play an important part in effective prisoner resettlement and help to reduce prisoner re-offending rates.

In a growing number of programmes across Britain and Ireland, Mothers' Union volunteers are aiming to reverse divorce and separation rates; working to help support prisoners and their families, encouraging them to develop nurturing relationships, even whilst separated by imprisonment.

The voluntary sector is essential in supporting the prison system and the Mothers' Union's role is key; the support they give to families is invaluable to the prisoners. It also helps the community, as evidence has shown that prisoners who maintain strong family relationships are much less likely to re-offend.

In our diocese it is not only members of the Mothers’ Union who are doing this sterling work, but members of our congregations too. In our own church, whilst Janet Whitehouse and I are MU members, Linda Harris, Roger Payne, Marian Winters, Bob & Pru Graves are not, but they have all volunteered to serve at the prisons.

In our diocese we have 2 very different penal establishments where the role of MUDPIES is to support the needs of the children and of families at visiting time, and to provide a supervised play area for children.  Chelmsford is a local Prison and Young Offender Institution. It is classified as Category B and therefore takes prisoners for whom escape must be made very difficult. People on remand are normally treated as Category B, mainly because, I think, they are an unknown quantity.  At Chelmsford we are lucky enough to have a purpose-built play area in the newly built Visits Hall. We have stocked the area with toys sourced by local churches.

Bullwood Hall, at Hockley is a Category C Prison and Young Offender Institution. It takes prisoners who do not have the skills or the desire to escape, and are therefore held in less secure conditions than those in category B. Until last year Bullwood Hall was a women’s prison but is now a male prison for foreign nationals.  At Bullwood Hall we welcome the visitors and serve cups of tea before going into the prison to supervise the children’s play area.  We started out providing our service at both prisons on Saturday afternoons only, but after a pilot scheme at Chelmsford in August we are now including Wednesdays in school holidays at both prisons. In addition we have recently begun Sunday afternoon sessions at Chelmsford and also re-started their Homework Club. This is for school-age children who live near enough to Chelmsford to be brought in to do their homework with their fathers. This happens one Tuesday a fortnight in an environment that excludes other prisoners.

On Saturdays and Sundays, as well as providing a safe, supervised play area with toys, we also provide a friendly face in the alien prison environment and enable families to be together without the stress of bored children. In addition we provide a sympathetic ear to the Mums and the children – even the prisoners occasionally.

There are several ways in which you can help MUDPIES:

• Firstly we need your prayers – for the prisoners, their families, the prison officers, the chaplaincy teams, the governors, and the volunteers.

• Secondly we need volunteers, both male and female, at both prisons, particularly for the Sunday sessions. You need no qualifications, just a love of children, compassion, a sense of fun and a warm heart. Of course you do have to have a CRB check and at Chelmsford you also have to be vetted by the prison. It is only a matter of time before Bullwood Hall goes down this route too.

• Thirdly we need money to purchase strong toys, endless supplies of craft materials and for general running costs.

• And lastly we need you to tell other people about the initiative, particularly at other churches. There is always somebody available to speak at church services or give a PowerPoint presentation to Mothers’ Union branches and other groups.

“I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’’…

If any one of us happens to perform a random act of kindness for a stranger, we are doing it to God, but the converse is also true, and our hands become Christ’s hands, for as Teresa of Avila wrote:

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ's compassion to the world.
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.