On my recent holiday I visited the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania. It was the second time I had visited there and I found the place tranquil, and fascinating, but also disturbing. Port Arthur was established in 1830 as a prison for the ‘unreformable’ convicts – the ones that kept escaping and reoffending. It was a harsh, cruel place, dominated by corporal punishment and strict discipline.
In the 1850s, however, a new philosophy of incarceration was taking hold. Instead of physical punishment it was thought that the best way to reform criminals was through isolation, silence and control. In other words, by removing all physical contact. The Separate Prison at Port Arthur is one of the earliest attempts at putting this new philosophy into practice. Prisoners were no longer called by name, only by number. When they were out of their cells they wore hoods. Mats were laid in the corridors so even footsteps made no sound. A central part of this reform program was the daily chapel service where the law of God was proclaimed by fire and brimstone preachers. Even in the chapel the prisoners had no interaction with each other. They were shut in individual boxes, walled off at the sides so they could only look ahead and see the preacher – the law-giver!
This ‘enlightened’ attempt at reformation was worse than the previous version! Prisoners weren’t rehabilitated, they simply went mad.
If it was reformation and transformation they wanted, perhaps they should have taken a leaf out of Jesus’ book. As Jesus stood on a mountain, flanked by the two great law-givers of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, Jesus had a different approach. He bent down to his cowering disciples, spoke words of comfort and touched them.
He touched them.
~ Pastor John