PRISON DOG PROGRAMS ~ HELPING PRISONERS TO HELP OTHERS

SR PAULINE QUINN OP srpauline@bpofcourage.org BRIDGES AND PATHWAYS OF COURAGE.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

HELPING PRISONERS


DEATH ROW ANGOLA ~ LOUSIANA STATE PRISON


Dwight Illinois Correctional Center for Women




Cumberland Federal Prison for men ~ Maryland


California Institution for Women


Our society seems to want to throw the key away to those who have committed crimes. They want them either dead or to spend the rest of their life in prison for the pain and suffering they have caused.

When can we forgive those who harm us? Even if they never get out of prison, they still can do things inside to make this a better world?
Who knows what they went through in their life to become as they are.

It doesn’t take away the evilness of their crime to forgive. They have to become responsible for what they have done. Is this possible?

In these pictures, the inmates don’t have “pets” in prison. They have working dogs that they are training to give to a disabled person or given to a police agency as a potential police dog. They are learning how to groom so once they are out of prison, it is a job skill they can use. They are also learning life skills.. how to take care of something that depends on them.

If we can teach others the importance of giving back something to our society, then it helps to make this a better world, one person at a time. To forgive isn’t easy to do but it is not impossible.

If St Paul could go out and persecute the Christians and God forgave him.. then we can do the same. Our life is a gift from God and no one has the right to take it away, either through crime or punishment.






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