Inmates Earn Degrees to Be Prison Missionaries

Fourteen South Carolina prison inmates now have Associate of Arts degrees from Columbia International University and are heading to medium and maximum security prisons across the state to work as missionaries.

The graduation ceremony Friday at Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia was the second for the program. The first class graduated in 2008. Another class is one year into the two-year program and another class will start in January.

Private donations through CIU pay for everything, so no taxpayer money is used. But organizers say it will benefit taxpayers. The graduates will work to be peacekeepers within the prisons and will offer spiritual guidance to any inmate who wants it.

Dr. David Osterlund of CIU, the program's director, says all the graduates are serving long-term sentences but they'll be talking to and befriending a lot of other inmates who are serving much less time and will be getting out.

"They may be the fellows that are out there and living next door to you. And if they are affected by what these fellows have to say to them, or some change in their life, it's going to affect that person on the outside," he says.

He says the inmate missionaries will share their faith but they won't force it on anyone. They'll serve on prison committees that help new inmates coming into the prisons. If new inmates are of a different faith, the missionaries will direct them to the appropriate programs, events or services.

Jerry is serving 20 years to life for murder. (Department of Corrections policy doesn't allow the media to use inmates' full names or show their faces.) He will be headed to the Tyger River Correctional Institution in Spartanburg County.

He says he'll assist the prison chaplain and will try to help inmates change their lives the way becoming a Christian has changed his.

"As we change our mindsets through the Word of God and begin to build moral character, godly character, then therefore what happens then is that, when we go out in society, we're able to be more productive," he says.

SC Department of Corrections Director Jon Ozmint started the program after seeing a similar one in Louisiana, which has reduced the amount of violence within its prisons.

According to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, its program awarded its first Bachelor's Degrees in Christian Ministries in January 2000. The year before that, there were 207 inmate assaults on Corrections staff. Assaults dropped to 126 in the first year after the first inmate missionaries went to work. Last year, there were 55 inmate assaults on staff.