Online Reporter
CHURCH leaders should embrace those who would have served their time in prison and also play a big role to help communities embrace them.
Reverend Noah Pashapa said this on the sidelines of the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Service Parole Conference in Harare.
Rev Pashapa, the founding president of Prison Ministries International, and chief chaplain of Africa Chaplains, said the church has a role to play in the rehabilitation, reintegration of inmates.
“We, as church leaders, should view ourselves as part of the solution in this transformative agenda. Beneficiaries of the parole system would have been proved to have scored high levels of reform in their behaviour and thinking.
“Churches should prepare by supporting and enhancing the reintegration of the ex-inmates and teach communities to avoid stigmatising them.
“Some people have a tendency of stigmatising people who would have spent more time in prison and the church has to correct that.”
He added: “Communities tend to forgot that everyone is a potential prisoner, even if you do not commit an offence you can be accused and find yourself behind bars.
“Church members are then called to change their social engagement with these individuals when they come back into society.
“Church leaders are expected to prepare for parole beneficiaries through awareness, information and education to the society.
“This is where prison ministries and chaplains come to play, in training church leaders and members in victim/offender reconciliation, correctional care, community service, among others.” Delegates from Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique, Mauritius, Tanzania, South Africa and Zambia are attending the conference, which is expected to end tomorrow.
Mathew Masinge