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Volunteers in Portland, England established the first Kairos faith-based residential community in The Verne Prison in April 1997. Similar residential communities inspired by the Cursillo movement had been operating in prisons in Brazil and Ecuador for over twenty years. Penelope Lee, former British BBC radio actress turned video producer, intrigued by the success of the Brazilian initiative, hastened to Sao Paulo to film a documentary of the project. Armed with her film, Penelope persuaded Her Majesty’s Prison Service to try a similar program in British prisons partnering with Kairos. The first effort, at The Verne Prison near Weymouth, proved so successful that the prison service encouraged expansion into four prisons within a year.
Barely one month following the Kairos dorm opening in England, Innerchange, the Prison Fellowship program, kicked off the opening of their initial effort in Texas, the first of its kind in the United States. Corrections was ready and waiting for a promising program to reverse abysmal and worsening recidivism outcomes.
The Florida Department of Corrections provided the next initiative. Recidivism studies performed by the Department on participants in the Kairos program at Union Correctional and Glades Correctional dramatically demonstrated the efficacy of faith-based programs. Their research showed a thirty-three percent drop in the recidivism rate of those inmates who had participated in Kairos when measured against a control group of like demographics who had not participated in Kairos. Data further revealed that continued participation in the faith community’s programs further decreased the recidivism rate. Representative Alan Trovillion, Chair of the Legislative Committee on Corrections heard of the study and insisted it be presented to state legislators for action. Florida statutes, regulations, and policies were passed or modified to enable faith-based communities to participate more directly in corrections.
The Florida Department of Corrections formed The Foundation for Partnerships in Correctional Excellence, an organization to work in support of the department in those areas difficult for the department to exercise direct influence. The Foundation established a mechanism to enable new residential faith-community initiatives. Kairos answered a Request for Proposals, outlining a Kairos Horizon program for Tomoka Correctional Institution near Daytona Beach. The Foundation secured a funding grant from the Commission on Responsible Fatherhood (CORF), The United States Department of Health and Human Services, and in November 1999, the grand experiment was launched.
Major collaborators in the Tomoka project shared a common vision but each held distinct objectives. Kairos Horizon program offered each of them a vehicle to achieve their particular objectives. For example:
• The Department of Corrections saw the program as a means of population control – an objective with political support. Innovative programming brought a fresh approach to departmental and executive branch leadership within Florida. Everyone in Corrections sincerely wants to see something good happen on his or her watch.
• The Commission on Responsible Fatherhood (CORF) saw the program as a means of reaching a group of men who were contributing a large percentage of irresponsible fatherhood and family violence problems within the state. CORF programs were already presented to offenders in the free world, but poorly attended. CORF felt that prison was the place to reach offenders.
• Faith groups find it difficult to find a venue in which to “visit the prisoner,” given the autonomous and cloistered nature of correctional institutions. Motivated religious organizations and volunteers find ample opportunity for service and access to prisoners with the establishment of a Horizon dorm.
Kairos’ long experience in providing safe and effective programs, presented by inter-denominational teams ministering in prisons, allowed all stakeholders to rally around Kairos in their joint effort to develop a faith-based residential program. The Kairos board encouraged the development and implementation of the “Tomoka Model,” but soon recognized departures from several basic premises of its ministry. Kairos Prison Ministry has always avoided paid staff at the institutional level, whereas Horizon requires paid contractors to serve its daily residential program. Kairos asked their executive director to develop a model program and form a new “sister” corporation to support it. Horizon Communities Corp. is that sister corporation.
The first Horizon “Interfaith” program came into existence in August 2000 at Marion Correctional Institution (MCI) in Marion, Ohio. Warden Christine Money had worked closely with Kairos, serving on its national board of directors, and as a member of the first Kairos team for women in England. After observing the development of both Horizon model and Prison Fellowship’s Innerchange program in Texas, she was ready to start a faith-based community at MCI. Warden Money wanted her Horizon community to produce servant leaders for the larger general population. As such, the program would not be purely Christian, but multi-faith including Jews, Muslims and Christians, and that community would provide peer leadership for other programs throughout the prison.
Oklahoma took the Ohio model and expanded it to include a Native American component, opening at Davis Correctional Facility at Holdenville. Horizon was learning to meet the needs of the incarcerated, Corrections and the faith communities while at the same time, playing defense against a litigiously active separation-of-church/state movement.
The next (I dare not say final) evolution of Horizon came when Florida Department of Corrections asked Horizon to provide a character-based dorm to mirror the faith-based dorm to provide services for those inmates who wanted access to programs but without the religious focus. This was, of course, a further move to escape litigation. To our total surprise, the mirroring character-based dorm was, within six months, providing the same dramatic personal conduct changes we had come to expect from the faith-based dorm. Dorm officers noted that the character-based side was even cleaner, quieter, more respectful of authority than the faith side. They speculated that federal policies guaranteeing the right to faith practice led faith-based dorm residents to see their participation as a right rather than a privilege, while the character-based dorm residents accepted participation as pure privilege. Both spirituality and ethical behavior remained strong in both dorms.
Following a direct request for collaboration, Horizon cooperates with the Florida Parole and Probation Commission. The commission keeps Horizon programs filled with participants who need preparation for release. All Horizon programs maintain core curriculum focused on:
1. Acceptance of self
2. Acceptance of others/relationships
3. Education
4. Citizenship
5. Job preparation/employability.
Horizon remains philosophically close to its Kairos origins. Kairos delivers a three day program designed to enable participants to develop relationships and minister to one another; Horizon delivers a year long program in which participants experience a sane, nourishing community built on mutual respect. Positive habits are learned through practice. By the time their year is complete, participants know that this lifestyle is what they have longed for and need and, upon release, will serve them well as they re-enter society.
