Ten years ago, Horseshoe Bay residents Dave and Helen Smith were invited to attend a graduation at the Ellen Halbert Women's Prison in Burnet by John Sage, a high school friend of Dave's who created Bridges to Life, a faith based program designed to bring healing to victims of crime, reduce recidivism, and help make communities safer.
Helen Smith recalls that first visit to prison. “I went into the prison scared. All I knew about prison was what I had seen on TV. When I saw the women open up with such sincerity and hope for a future of transformation, I was hooked.” Helen facilitated her first BTL program the next year. Dave joined the team a year later. The Smiths have been the backbone of the BTL program at Halbert as facilitators with the participants and mentors to new volunteers.
Five years ago, while HSB resident Laura Koby was looking for meaningful work “outside her comfort zone,” she ran into Helen Smith at the grocery store. As Smith told Koby about her work as a BTL facilitator, Koby knew she had found her calling. Over the years, Koby has seen the transformation that occurs when “the light turns on” for BTL participants as they take responsibility for their actions, and their future. Now the team leader for BTL at Halbert, Koby says the BTL facilitators at Halbert have a camaraderie with one another and the inmates in their groups. “We hear gut-wrenching stories and meaningful feedback from the ladies in a confidential, trusted setting.”
Each session of the 14 week Bridges to Life program focuses on a single word and its meaning to the life of offenders and to crime victims. With their study guides in hand and their homework completed, the inmates and their volunteer leaders, called “facilitators,” engage in conversation about the topic of the week. From accountability to confession, from repentance to responsibility, from forgiveness to reconciliation – the weekly gatherings enable the ladies to learn from their past and prepare for their future re-entry into society.
Bringing victims of crime together with offenders in the presence of a facilitator is core to BTL. The Ellen Halbert Unit is a Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facility housing female offenders with six to nine month sentences for drug or alcohol related crimes. According to Deborah Hartman, Central Texas Regional Coordinator for BTL, “there are no victim-less crimes, every crime has a victim.” Even low level drug dealers and repeat driving while intoxicated offenders “hurt society and often harm specific individuals, including themselves.”
Hartman said most of the women at Halbert have been abused and view themselves as victims of abuse. BTL brings in victims of violent crimes, such as the prison's namesake Ellen Halbert, to talk to participants in the Halbert program “to show the women that if victims of horrific crimes can forgive those who harmed them, then perhaps they too can forgive their abusers.” And once the women quit seeing themselves as victims because of their past lives, they can move on to becoming responsible members of the community.
Hartman describes the weekly programs as “supportive confrontation” as facilitators “gently listen, hear their pain, share their pain and then hold participants accountable for not only their past, but also for their future.” BTL provides an intellectual and emotional set of tools that inmates can utilize to “do it right this time” rather than make the same bad steps that landed them in prison. The women at Halbert take this intangible but memorable set of tools with them once they are released from custody, so when they find themselves at a crossroad, they are strong and able to chart a better course in life.
BTL is a private non-profit organization that brings its message to prisons under the Chaplaincy Program of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Mark Cartwright, Chaplain at the Halbert prison, says BTL is the “flagstone” of Halbert's faith based dorm program. More ladies want to join the life changing faith based programs than the facility can accommodate due to lack of space. Cartwright said more of Halbert's 600 women are also opting to attend traditional church services.
The original plans for the Halbert facility included a chapel/gym building with classrooms, security office and a large area for worship events and sports. When the prison project ran out of funds, the chapel/gym building was excluded. Consequently, Chaplaincy programs at Halbert compete for the same space with educational programs, and the educational programs are given priority when allocating use of the 98 person capacity space. Since 2017, the Chaplaincy programs have had to cut back evening Bible study classes and faith based programs such as BTL due to lack of space.
HSB resident Pam Stevenson owns Network Mortgage with her husband, Glenn. About a decade ago, Pam got a “nudge” to volunteer at a prison. She answered that nudge by teaching Bible studies at the Halbert unit. “When the Chaplain asked me to lead the Beth Moore Breaking Free Bible study, we initially ran a 12 week program three times a year, but as the faith based programs lost space and priority, we had to cut back,” Stevenson explained.
The same spiritual nudge that had moved Stevenson to facilitate Bible studies at a prison revisited her as she saw faith based options at Halbert dwindle for lack of physical space. That second nudge led Stevenson to establish Joseph's Hammer, a 501(c)3 non-profit, earlier this year to raise funds to build a chapel at Halbert. “We see the ladies leaving that place with confidence, returning to their families completely transformed, all because volunteers shared a powerful message of hope with them.” The board of Joseph's Hammer is working with an engineer and the TDCJ on plans for an 8,000 square foot multi-purpose chapel at Halbert for the sole use of the Chaplaincy programs. Although Joseph's Hammer has just recently begun a fund raising campaign, it has already received a grant from the Wayne and JoAnn Moore Charitable Foundation and several substantial individual donations to help launch its goal of building a chapel at Halbert.
Chaplain Cartwright says TDCJ reports one of the lowest overall recidivism rates in the nation (21.75%) and credits faith based programs for playing a large role in this accomplishment, as the TDCJ. Inmates work, attend class, and participate in substance abuse therapy as part of their rehabilitation, but they also have the option to worship in prison and to open themselves to receiving God into their lives.
Hartman said there are no available recidivism rates for Bridges to Life graduates for the Halbert unit, but the latest three year study of BTL graduates from a diversified group of 35 prisons (not just substance abuse facilities) showed an overall recidivism rate of 14.5%, of which only 2.5% were returned to prison for committing a violent crime.
TDCJ offers ten different religious services across the prison system. While all religious services, educational classes and volunteer programs vie for time to use one sparse room at Halbert, Joseph's Hammer is at work on building a suitable place at Halbert for inmates to worship, learn about God, and grow into productive members of our society.
