ABSTRACT
Somewhere along the way America lost focus on the rehabilitative ideals of its earliest prisons. Early models of correctional practice were more collaborative than prisons of today, combining state resources with philanthropic, religious, and civic assets to better manage offenders.
This chapter offers a glimpse into a novel and growing set of programs transforming maximum-security prison environments: inmate peer ministry programs. Specifically, the chapter describes the development and utilization of inmate peer ministries in six US maximum-security prisons. Drawing upon data from a multi-institution, multi-year research agenda exploring the impact of inmate peer ministries supported by private charities and religious educational institutions operating in maximum-security prisons, this chapter considers inmate peer ministry from the perspective of life-history interviews, prison site visits, and archival research. As a means of helping prisons become more reinventive and less totalizing for inmates, inmate peer ministries vest prisons with new resources, stakeholders, and operational paradigms that are disruptive to traditional corrections.
