Kairos Inside

It operates in men’s and women’s correctional centres around Australia, and is based on a 3- to 5-day ‘Short Course’ run inside the centre by a team an extraordinary team of highly trained volunteers.

The inmates who take part in Kairos Inside are invited by the prison chaplain with approval of the prison administration, and each inmate can chose whether they want to attend or not. The program is completely voluntary.

Through a systematic, structured program, Kairos Inside participants:

• are given the time to reflect on their lives to date;
• hear the life stories of many team members;
• learn that choice is an option for them (often the first time they have recognised this).
• learn to recognise that some team members have had lives just as hard as theirs, but made different responses to difficulties and challenges; and
  
• are buoyed by the hope that ‘what was' doesn’t have to be 'what will be’.

During Kairos Inside, participants are placed in small groups made up of a team leader and other participants. The groups are encouraged to take on the characteristics of a sharing family. For many residents, this is their first experience of a supportive family environment.

After a ‘Short Course’ there is an ongoing ‘Journey’ program where a rotation of team members continue to return every week or fortnight until the next Short Course is run in 6 or 12 months time.

Since actions always speak louder than words to most inmates, it is in the ongoing Journey program that the ‘proof of the words’ is experienced as team leaders members ‘walk the talk’, which is proof of their willingness to support the participants in moving forward.

The Impact

A recent study completed by Kairos Prison Ministry into the recidivism rate of NSW Department of Corrective Services (DCS) inmates who have completed Kairos Inside shows a favourable result compared with the overall recidivism rate for DCS.

What does this really mean in savings to society?

Even if the impact of Kairos was to produce only a 10% improvement on the average recidivism rate (43% returning for a new crime within two years), the saving to the community would conservatively be $7.2M per annum in prison costs.

In addition there are savings in court and police processing time and costs, people are saved from becoming victims of crime, and the community is saved the direct costs of crimes not committed - and this is on top of the lives changed and the ripple effect out to family and friends.