evangelical 360°
A timely and relevant new podcast that dives into the contemporary issues which are impacting Christian life and witness around the world. Guests include leaders, writers, and influencers, all exploring faith from different perspectives and persuasions. Inviting lively discussion and asking tough questions, evangelical 360° is hosted by Brian Stiller, Global Ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance. Our hope is that each person listening will come away informed, encouraged, challenged and inspired!
evangelical 360°
Ep. 31 / Outreach on the Inside with Prison Fellowship Canada ► Stacey Campbell
What happens to people after they're sentenced and the news cycle moves on? In this profound and eye-opening conversation, Stacey Campbell, President and CEO of Prison Fellowship Canada, pulls back the curtain on a world most of us never see.
Stacey's remarkable journey began at just 15 years old when a chance connection with Prison Fellowship in its early days planted seeds that would later bloom into her life's calling. Now, with over 15 years of leadership, she offers rare insights into Canada's prison system and the transformative work happening within its walls.
The statistics might surprise you. Contrary to popular belief, 75% of Canadian inmates are serving time for drug-related offenses, not violent crimes. Perhaps most troubling is the dramatic overrepresentation of Indigenous people – making up only 5% of Canada's population but 33-40% of male inmates and a staggering 50% of female prisoners.
Through powerful stories of transformation, Stacey reveals how Prison Fellowship's programs work through a three-part process of encounter, repair, and transformation. Their restorative practice brings surrogate victims together with offenders, creating spaces for healing conversations that answer long-held questions and foster genuine accountability. "We don't bring Jesus into prison," Stacey explains. "Jesus is already there. We just highlight him and say, 'See, there he is.'"
Beyond prison walls, their Bridge Care program supports former inmates transitioning back to society, while Angel Tree connects thousands of children with their incarcerated parents through Christmas gifts. These connections prove crucial not just for emotional wellbeing but for breaking intergenerational cycles of crime.
Whether you're interested in criminal justice reform, faith-based rehabilitation, or simply want to understand a forgotten corner of our society, this conversation challenges assumptions and inspires hope for lives being restored and redeemed in places we too often prefer to ignore.
You can learn more about Stacey Campbell and Prison Fellowship Canada through their website and Facebook.
And you can share this episode using hashtag #Evangelical360 and join the conversation online!
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Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm your host, brian Stiller, and I'm pleased to share with you another conversation with leaders, changemakers and influencers impacting Christian life around the world. My guest today President and CEO of Prison Fellowship Canada. Some may be familiar with Prison Fellowship thanks to the life and legacy of American founder Chuck Colson, but many of us know little about the prison system itself. We hear about people being sentenced in the news, maybe the topic of incarceration comes up in conversation, but for the most part, we know little about the human beings on the inside. Well, stacey knows all about the sights and sounds on the inside and what these individuals experience. Her service to Prison Fellowship Canada for over 15 years is an inspiration and challenge to us all. Stacey, it's wonderful to have you here today on Evangelical 360.
Stacey Campbell:Great to be here.
Stacey Campbell:Brian
Brian Stiller:Stacey, you manage Prison Fellowship, primarily male population. How did you land up in this work, in this world, in these prisons?
Stacey Campbell:So really interesting God story. So that goes back to when I was 15 years old. So I took a job working for a real estate development company in Mississauga who was giving free space to a new ministry that had just started up in Canada, which was Prison Fellowship. So that's how I got connected to Prison Fellowship and Ian Stanley was the executive director at the time.
Stacey Campbell:And one day I came running in from school after school and telling everybody that there was a guy in grade 12 who was going to pay me 50 bucks to write his English essay. He instantly motioned for me to come over to him and said we're going to sit down at my office and I'm going to tell you why you're not going to get the 50 bucks and why you're not going to write the essay. So that was the beginning of a beautiful and I had just become a Christian. And so that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And Ian invested in me and really was my first, my first spiritual director, my first spiritual conversation partner that I had in my life, and we stayed friends.
Stacey Campbell:I worked at the organization for the following four years and every Friday Ian and I sat down and had a chat and then I left and off. I went into the world and when you're that age, you don't understand the value of having somebody that invested in you like that. We stayed in touch for a while but we didn't stay in touch permanently and when I was at Tyndale Seminary doing some work there, I just kept getting this prompting prison ministry, prison ministry, prison ministry. And I was like no way, no way. But then finally did, and prison fellowship was the only ministry that I knew of in that space. Was the only ministry that I knew of in that space, and so I applied to be a volunteer and went very quickly from being a volunteer to being a staff member, and the day I was photographed to take the position at PFC was the day Ian Stanley passed away.
Brian Stiller:Oh really.
Stacey Campbell:Yeah.
Brian Stiller:Well, prison fellowship has an interesting beginning. Chuck Colson, who was Nixon's hatchet man, went to prison and when he came out of prison he came to faith and that led into prison fellowship.
Brian Stiller:Tell that story.
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, so he definitely had a faith background but wasn't practicing when he went into prison but was really, really struck by the loneliness of the men that he saw in the prison and that they just really had nobody. He wanted to go back and to visit them. He didn't intend that he was going to go back or build this organization in 125 countries around the world with Ron Nichols' help, but that's what was on his heart was to go back and visit them and bring the hope of Jesus back into the prison.
Brian Stiller:We drive down our streets past penitentiaries, prisons, and we just never think of them as an element of our society. Who's there and how they got there? I guess the prison system does a pretty good job in taking them off the streets and helping us forget about them. Is that why Jesus said don't forget about them?
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, remember the prisoners as if you yourself were with them. Right, and it's interesting in Scripture it's actually bookended from the in Isaiah, where where Jesus's ministry is really announced, all the way to Matthew 25, which is the last public teaching that Jesus does. They talk about prisoners and it's it's bookended through the whole book. Jesus is predisposed to widows, orphans, prisoners, the refugee, for sure.
Brian Stiller:Because we forget about prisoners.
Stacey Campbell:We forget about prisoners, yeah.
Brian Stiller:What's the state of the prison system? You're in Canada, but Prison Fellowship is in 100 and some countries. That's right. Canada tends to have one of the better prison systems, maybe.
Stacey Campbell:I would say we do. Yeah, on the global scale it's a pretty good system.
Brian Stiller:Describe it for us.
Stacey Campbell:So we have the federal and provincial systems. So if you are awaiting a sentence or you're serving a sentence of two years, less a day or under, you're going to be taken care of in the provincial system and that's called jail. Our federal prison is actually taken care of federally and it's for those who have been sentenced to more than two years in a prison. Our average sentence in a federal facility is eight years and in a provincial facility they're turning over every 17 to 30 days. So we have, if you were to take a snapshot of our prison on any given day, we have about 38,000 prisoners, but we have about 350,000 that go through the system in a year. The majority of people that are in are in for drug-related offenses. Close to 75% are in for drug-related offenses and we tend to read the headlines and think that everyone in a prison is violent, but in reality it's under. 9% of offenders are in for violent offenses.
Brian Stiller:But in those prisons you also have the guards, the attendants.
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, correctional officers.
Brian Stiller:Yeah, is there an easy role?
Stacey Campbell:That's not an easy role and we've seen a real increase in tension for the correctional officer in the last few years In the province of New Brunswick. As an example, nine years was the average tenure of a correctional officer and it's now nine months, so lots of violence.
Brian Stiller:Does this increase violence? Does it come from? Is it a societal issue? What's driving that in your experience?
Stacey Campbell:So the trend that we've seen in the last few years is a real uptick in refugees that are coming to Canada, and we're happy for that, but what we are seeing is we're seeing that echoed in the prisons as well, and oftentimes these people are coming from countries that don't have the same relationship with authority and for structure, and so being in combat with a correctional officer is just perfectly normal, and so we're seeing that play out. I think we're also seeing the trauma of war that is going on in a number of countries as people come to Canada, and so that brings with it a certain level of violence as well.
Brian Stiller:So they bring their memories, their experiences, their fears and hopes and dreams and that filters right into our entire society. And of course, it never occurs to us that the prisons also feel the impact of whatever kind of immigrant or migratory elements we have within our society, of people coming and going. It eventually filters its way through into the prison system.
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, that's right, and it's really important to make the distinction that that is, of course, is not the entire population of people that are coming to Canada, but there is a group that filters through. And when we don't have the infrastructure and we don't have the hope, the help that we're promising, where are people going to get jobs, how are people going to get money, how are people going to live? And so that's going to lead to crime.
Brian Stiller:And you said 75 percent of people in prisons today. Are there drug related? The other factor I'm from the West and do you have a disproportionate Indigenous community in prisons?
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, do we ever so? In the men's population, 33 to 40 percent of the population is Indigenous, and in our women's facilities it's 50 percent, brian, 50 percent.
Brian Stiller:As compared to the percentage of Indigenous in our country. Overall.
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, that's right. Well, no, no.
Stacey Campbell:50 of the total female prison population is indigenous
Brian Stiller:and and what's the percentage of five of indigenous to our total population? Five?
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, five percent yeah
Brian Stiller:well as you serve in the prisons. I'm interested in knowing whether the social, political debate, whether that works its way down into policy and into program within the prison system.
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, it does. Absolutely Everything works its way into the prison system, because it's just a microcosm of the community. So for sure, depending on the government that is presiding at the time, we have different shifts that we see in the institutions. So give you an example of that. Back to talking about women. So women used to.
Stacey Campbell:There used to be a few beds that were allotted across a number of institutions if I take Ontario as an example and then under one government. Nope, we need to make that more efficient. We're going to put them all in one facility. So that definitely affects access to families, access to children and the ability to foster pro-social relationships. For when those individuals come out, we see other things that happen in terms of depending which government is in, which ones will be more open to programming, which ones will be less open to programming, which ones are going to have longer sentences, which allows for greater rehabilitation, which one is going to have. All of the air conditioning was taken out of the federal prisons and felt to be a luxury. However, when you confine a very large portion of people into a very small space, we watched the violence statistics go up.
Brian Stiller:So in the heat of the summer the prisons have no air conditioning, just fans.
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, yeah, if that.
Brian Stiller:And that was considered to be a luxury, and so the government in place at the time cut that out. Yeah, you said that longer sentences help. In what sense?
Stacey Campbell:So in the sense that if the sentence is too short, then they're just coming in and then more crimes are committed, and then they're back in, and then they're back in, and then they're back in, but there isn't this period of time to actually work with programs and work with individuals that can help in the rehabilitation process.
Brian Stiller:Let us talk a bit about what Prison Fellowship does. Here you've got these thousands of people mostly men but some women in the various prisons across the country. They're at various levels, everything from murder to some kind of minor petty theft Right. It seems to me that the public have an assumption that a person who is going to prison is without worth and there's really no hope for them. Do they feel the same?
Brian Stiller:way.
Stacey Campbell:Yes, yeah, I would say. I would say a lot of them are without hope and a lot of them feel that they are constrained to that state, whatever station they are at in life. A lot of them have never had their thinking challenged. So one of the programs that we participate in is a restorative practice program where we challenge offenders to take full responsibility and full accountability for their crimes. But it's a long process to get there, but in that we really see the thinking that someone I'm born into this and this is how my life is, and I'm not even thinking of how do I get out of this, how do I do something else. But you know, they love the stories of Jesus and they love when they catch a glimpse and a vision for what is the abundant life that Jesus actually talks about in John 10.
Stacey Campbell:You know, I came that, you know that whole scripture. What is that? And it's a thief comes to kill and destroy and steal and we'll look at that. And then we'll say, well, what does what? Does crime kill and steal and destroy All my family and my self-worth and my future and all of this? And yet I came that they would have life and have it to the fullest. Well, what did Jesus mean? What is life to the fullest? Well, I'd have a family and I'd have self-esteem and I'd have you know, productive work to do. And it's like, wow, these are exactly the same, these are exactly the same thing, and you can make that bridge over into do you want this?
Brian Stiller:So you go into prison? What are you looking to accomplish?
Stacey Campbell:I think what we're what we're we don't bring Jesus into the prison Jesus is already in the prison but highlighting for people that there is a better life and that Jesus has something for them, he has a purpose, he has a calling on their life, and we want to see people be all that God has called them to be. That's what we want to see. We want to see people be all that God has called them to be. That's what we want to see. We want to see fewer victims, and the cycle sometimes that people don't see is unhealed. Victims often become perpetrators, and so you need to work with the whole cycle, which is why we work with offenders, we work with ex-offenders, we work with their families, we work with their children, we work with victims. You're working with the whole cycle of crime, as well as the whole life cycle of a prisoner.
Brian Stiller:So we live in this country that's quite secular. Many people pride themselves on Canada being secular. So you go into a government system, run a government program that runs prisons and you are Christian up front, right, right. How do they see you?
Stacey Campbell:The posture I would say is that it's those who are in prison and claim to have a certain faith who call for us, and that's how we come in. They have a right to practice their faith in their tradition. So if they're Christian and they want a Christian organization or they want a Bible study, that comes in. Then the chaplain calls PF, and we want, we'd like to have a Bible study. So that's kind of how we, how we, how we get in to the facility. We're protected in that it's a charter right for someone to practice their own faith and then. So those are kind of the the legal implications. But the staff in a prison will often comment that when people are involved in Bible study programs or that type of thing, it brings the anxiety in the prison down. They see a difference. They see a difference.
Brian Stiller:And how do you go about serving prisoners, ministering to them, doing their Bible study? How does that work?
Stacey Campbell:So we have particular programs that are set to accomplish different things. So an example we have one that's called the Forgiveness Journey and it looks at forgiveness, all the different aspects of forgiveness in the Bible, over a 10-week period. And I've never met a prisoner Brian that doesn't want to be forgiven. So those programs we have life skill programs that are based on a biblical model, that type of thing, the restorative practice where people really want to encounter and make amends with their victim, and so we provide a program that starts that we work with surrogate victims to start with and they spend a lengthy period of time working through actually telling the truth.
Stacey Campbell:I had one woman who 10 years, 10 years in and she finally says I can't carry this anymore, I've got to tell the truth and and finally, finally told the truth and took responsibility for her crime and then met with somebody who'd been through a similar crime and heard their story of impact and and all these things that we think a normal human being would just get. But they don't. But you go through victim empathy and those types of programs, and then we talk about well, what's the biblical basis of all this? Why are we doing this? And so those are great programs. Then we have programs outside. So we have a bridge care program, which is for people trying to reintegrate back into society. We walk with them from three to 36 months, depending on how long they need to transition back safely. We want to see fewer victims and we want to see, you know, lives healed and productive lives.
Brian Stiller:Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship, wrote this famous book called Born Again. So obviously within the gospel there is this transformational aspect. How does that play itself out in the life of a prisoner?
Stacey Campbell:So I use three words for that encounter, repair and transformation. So there has to be an encounter with Jesus in some form. They have to meet Jesus in some way, whether that's through the Bible study or talking about him or praying to him, but somehow it begins with an encounter with Jesus. And then you know, brian, the word justice, biblically speaking, means God has taken what has fallen over and stands it up straight. It's the meaning of justice. And so that is that's what's happening through the encounter, the repair. And so that is that's what's happening through the encounter, the repair, and then transformation. Transformation occurs Not all at once, right Little bits, back and forth, back and forth, but over a long, lengthy, lengthy period of time. We see it.
Stacey Campbell:Just like in our life.
Brian Stiller:And how do prisoners meet?
Brian Stiller:Jesus Tell us the story.
Stacey Campbell:So here's an example of one of our programs and how we would do it. We have, like, we have a little card that we put out and it's a basketball court, and on the basketball court we talk about all the different positions. You know, you could be at the center, you could be on the opposing team. You could be as it relates to Jesus. You could be on the opposing team. You could be a heckler in the crowd. You could be somebody that's up in the benches, but you've really you're a hurt player, you've encountered the church before and you're hurt, and then that's where you are. You could be on the court, but you're not at center court. And so we talk about you know, where are you in? Where are you with Jesus? Have you ever heard of Jesus and who is Jesus? Who is God? And we have these incredibly honest and bare conversations and then just provide this little card to help us locate where somebody is.
Stacey Campbell:Another example of how I often do it is I will read the passage from Ecclesiastes that talks about all the different seasons and the times. So it's a time to you know. It's a time to heal. It's a time to scatter, scatter. It's a time to gather. It's a, so we'll read through the whole passage and then I'll ask what time is it? What time is it? And they'll be oh, for me it's definitely. It's a time to this and a time to this, all right, and then that's an entry, that's an entry way in.
Stacey Campbell:So there's a couple examples of you
Brian Stiller:tell the story of somebody who has gone through that transformational process.
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, oh boy, I could tell so many stories. So I can tell the story of an individual who was in for a fairly serious crime, actually, and went to meet with him and he said to me now this book, like does that belong to your church? I'm like you mean the Bible? And he said, yeah, like the Bible. Like does every church have their own Bible? It's like, well, no, we all have one Bible.
Stacey Campbell:There's different translations, but, but so something as basic as that is not knowing. So I was going away for Christmas and said to said to him as that is not knowing, so I was going away for Christmas and said to him I want you to read, but I don't want you to start with Genesis and go all the way through. I want you to promise me you're going to start in the book of John, and I love to start prisoners in the book of the gospel of John because it's very inclusive, right. And so started them there.
Stacey Campbell:Come back two weeks later, of course, and the individual says to me man, this stuff is tough. He says I started out in the book of Genesis and he starts to ask me all of these questions about David and different things that are going. He's like, wow, this stuff is scary and so kind of just what you don't. I have never experienced that in a church, some of the stories, but anyway, we continued on and continued a relationship and continued to meet through Bible study. And you know, that's probably about 12 years ago, brian and that individual wrote me about a month ago to say they were going on their first missions trip, and so he became a.
Stacey Campbell:Christian became a Christian and did his time. Yeah, did his full time, became a Christian, went through the bridge care program, was placed in a faith community, went to church for many, many years and we've been writing the whole time. It's not like. It's not like I just heard from him after after 10 years. We've been, you know, we've kept in contact for a long time, but
Brian Stiller:what did you do during?
Brian Stiller:COVID.
Stacey Campbell:During COVID was tough because we were shut out of the prison and Providence. This was so providential. Two weeks before that happened I had a ministry call and say we have a phone line in the prison but we don't use it. We don't want to just shut it down because it takes could take eight years to get a phone line in the prison. Do you want it it? And so I said yeah, I'll take it. I'll take it for our bridge care people because then people, four to six months before they're leaving, they can call our line, start to set up community and do all of that.
Stacey Campbell:So a few weeks into COVID I had a chaplain who called me and said Stacey, could we use your phone line just for, you know, prisoners to make a call Like the mental health crisis that's going on in here is untenable. And I, being the strategist, said, well, no, you can't use that phone line, but if you give me another phone line I'll build a whole program around it, because I did want to preserve that first line for bridge care. So within days I had the approval of a phone line right across Canada and prisoners could call for spiritual friendship and for prayer, and we get thousands of calls still on that line.
Brian Stiller:So prisons in this country and in most countries are scattered about the country, yep, and in those places, those towns and villages and cities, there are churches. Mm-hmm, how can the church help? It seems to me that the church is generally the local congregation is a long of as a prison town. It used to be 11 prisons.
Stacey Campbell:There's eight prisons there now all concentrated, and so it's very much a culture around correctional staff and so it becomes hard because we've created this polarization between the offender and the correctional staff. So those sometimes are challenges. But we do have good churches there. So those sometimes are challenges, but we do have good churches there. But churches in general, if you're not in a two-hour time slot once a week and minister to correctional staff.
Brian Stiller:And what happens when a prisoner is released? What's the transition and what kind of transition do you bring to their lives from prison back into society?
Stacey Campbell:Back into society. So that's our bridge care program, where we have a team of two individuals that will walk alongside that person for three to 36 months, and sometimes it's longer. We have some people that are in the four-year category, but we walk alongside them and just help to break down. Okay, this week you're just going to do these two things, because it's overwhelming, brian, somebody could have been in. They've burnt all their bridges. They have no relationships in the community. Now they've got a criminal record. How are they going to get a job? And we know you need stable community, stable housing and stable employment in order to be successful. So we work toward those objectives and then, when the person is ready, getting them established in a faith community.
Brian Stiller:Yeah, when the person is ready getting them established in a faith community. Yeah, a few years ago I went with Ron Nickel, the former international director of prison fellowship, and we spent a number of weeks in Central America visiting seven prisons, and some of them were in El Salvador and Ecuador and other places were mind boggling. I can't imagine that a person could live more than a week in a place like that. But what I did come in touch with was a program called Angel Tree. Tell us about that, yeah.
Stacey Campbell:So Angel Tree started in the US and it was actually a bank robber, a woman who was a bank robber, who went to prison and found what all prisoners find at Christmas is this horrible reality sets in that you actually have nothing to give to your child and can't give anything, and so she was wrapping up little soaps that she got instead of using them so that she could send that home to her children.
Stacey Campbell:Anyway, when she got out, mary Kay Beard was her name, and when she got out she came to work for Prison Fellowship in the US and started the Angel Tree Program. So the Angel Tree Program allows it's initiated by the prisoner and they can fill out an application to get a small gift sent to their child. And here in Canada we also put in a room where put room on the application where they can fill out a message to their child in their own handwriting and that goes on the gift. And then the local church. We look for local churches in the area where that child lives to shop for, purchase and wrap the gift and then deliver it to the child and hopefully even invite them to your church. And so 5,009 children here in Canada we took care of last year.
Brian Stiller:And what does that do to the family?
Stacey Campbell:So for the family, oftentimes it's the only gift that that child is going to get. As you can imagine, like you said, 97% of our prisoners are male and when a father goes to prison, the family is often quickly descends into poverty and so there isn't money for Christmas gifts or a tree or anything like that. So for the family it's definitely very welcome because the child has a gift and then the child is connected to their father and that has a whole list of ramifications, positive ramifications for a child. A child who's connected to a parent, even an incarcerated parent, is more likely to go out for sports, more likely to join extracurricular events, more likely to initiate socially All those pro-social things that we want to keep, these that we want to see in these kids so that they're not joining that cycle of crime, because there is a much higher predisposition to them going to prison as well if they've got an incarcerated parent.
Brian Stiller:What do you need here in Canada? What does Prison Fellowship need globally to do its ministry of caring for prison?
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, we need the church community to come alongside of us. I know it's a fearful thing to think about coming alongside of a prisoner, particularly in the community, but there's lots of training and you know lots of stories from volunteers who will say it's their favorite day is their PFC day. And we need the church to engage with us and join us in helping to minister to prisoners and ex-prisoners, in helping to minister to prisoners and ex-prisoners. So another area that we need in our restorative practice work I had mentioned that, brian that we bring surrogate victims into the prison who share the impact of the crime and typically they're 10 to 15 years away from when their crime happened to them. But we need people who have experienced crime to come and volunteer to share their stories of how they were impacted at the time, two years later, five years later, 10 years later, and to come into a circle and explain that to an offender.
Brian Stiller:Yeah, and are prisoners open to hearing those stories?
Stacey Campbell:And there's actually statistics behind it and the statistics say that 40% of victims want to meet their offender and 40%. Coincidentally, 40% of offenders want to meet the person that they harmed, for dialogue, to apologize, to express remorse. They're not the same 40%, of course. That matches up perfectly, but it is really redemptive work.
Brian Stiller:What does that look like? Take me into a prison where a victim he or she is in telling their story. Are they sitting, are they standing in front of a crowd, or just two or three prisoners? What does it look like?
Stacey Campbell:So we operate the restorative practice in a circle, typically have up to 12 offenders between six and 12 offenders that are in the circle, and they're the one they have gone through for months. They have gone through work with us as they prepare to meet a surrogate.
Brian Stiller:Oh, so you're prepping them on the? It's not just a chance encounter. No, it's part of a longer term strategy.
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, and also we don't want to re A hundred percent yeah. So every staff member at PFC goes into the prison half a day a week, so, and they may do different programs. Some might work in bridge care, some might work in Bible studies.
Brian Stiller:Bridge, care is the transition out.
Stacey Campbell:Yeah, the transition out. So I myself work once a week with the restorative practice program, so, and I'm I'm actually running one right now and have have victims coming in tomorrow night to the, to the prisoner and to the prison in Kitchener, and so what we do with that circle? We understand what their crimes are and so we look for surrogate victims who have suffered the same harms as what you say surrogate victims, not just a victim not just a victim, because a victim would be the direct, they would be each other's direct victims.
Stacey Campbell:So surrogate in the fact that this person has lost someone due to, you know, a drunk driving incident where someone was killed. This one has perpetrated it. They're not each other's victims, but they share an uncommon understanding because they're linked by the same crime.
Brian Stiller:So that victim, or that surrogate victim, as you call them, comes in and sits and tells his or her story.
Stacey Campbell:Yep Comes in and tells the impact of what it was like to suffer that crime.
Brian Stiller:And do they read a script or do they just talk?
Stacey Campbell:They can both Either. Some are more comfortable to write it out before they come and then read that and then look up and answer questions, and some just come in and tell their stories.
Brian Stiller:And what's the atmosphere?
Stacey Campbell:It's tense. It's tense to start with. Certainly, some come in and they express anger.
Brian Stiller:Who.
Stacey Campbell:The victim, yeah for sure At what's happened and and really a real frustration about just wanting to understand why did you pick me? Was it random? Was it, was it on purpose? Why did you do this? Why? Why do you commit these crimes? Why do you sell drugs? Can you not see that my nephew was, you know whatever state he was already in? And how could you do that? And then the offenders share oh, we don't even see that. We are so focused on just getting money so that we can live. We're not even looking at that. And so they answer those why questions and those what if? Questions that a victim carries for decades.
Brian Stiller:So a person goes through that restorative justice process, what does that ultimately bring into their lives for the future?
Stacey Campbell:So, for the surrogate victim, a huge measure of healing. And a lot of them will say I saw remorse. It wasn't the person who actually committed the crime, but I saw remorse and that's all I needed. That's what I needed.
Stacey Campbell:We have an individual right now who threw a drunk driving accident and is a paraplegic, and the individual who was responsible had good lawyers and had lawyers that delayed the individual long enough that by the time they did a breathalyzer, they were under the legal limit and the person walked and it was a friend that she knew and never saw them again and wondered wow, I've been sitting in this wheelchair for 15 years. Like, did you ever think about me? Like, have I ever crossed your mind? And so came in and sees an offender that we've got in the facility who did the same thing, had an impaired charge causing significant bodily harm, and so was able to ask her questions about what about this? And do you think about your victim? And what's a sample of you thinking about your victim? And she's like yep, I carry his impact statement in my wallet and I read it every morning when I wake up. That was hugely healing for the individual.
Stacey Campbell:that doesn't know if someone ever thought, thinks of her.
Brian Stiller:So what drives you every day?
Stacey Campbell:It's a calling, Brian for sure, and I am as excited about prison fellowship today as I was when I got here 16 years ago. And you know, I just I love Jesus and I feel really close to him when I'm in the prison and to see repair and to see lives healed and reconciled. I think it heals a little piece of my heart and I love the work. It is so life-giving, it is hard, it's hard work, but it is so life-giving and he's just there.
Brian Stiller:But you don't take Jesus there.
Stacey Campbell:No, he's already there.
Brian Stiller:He's already there.
Stacey Campbell:He's already there, but we highlight him and we say, see, there he is.
Brian Stiller:Thank you so much for being with us today on Evangelical 360.
Stacey Campbell:Thanks, Brian
Brian Stiller:, thank you, stacey, for joining us today and for helping us to see and hear those we far too often forget or ignore, and thank you for being a part of the podcast. I'd be grateful if you would subscribe and share this episode using hashtag Evangelical360. If you'd like to learn more about today's guest, be sure to check the show notes or description below, and if you haven't already received my free e-book and newsletter, just go to brianstillercom. Thanks again, until next time.