Hare Krishna. All glories to Srila Prabhupada ki jai!

I just wanted to let everyone there know that the ISKCON Atlanta prison ministry is coming along great. In a few weeks we’ve been able to contact more than one half of the state’s prison systems, and all the religious coordinators have agreed to let us send in books and materials to the individual institutions.

We are contacting others daily. An article on the ISKCON Atlanta prison ministries should be in the forthcoming Back to Godhead magazine.

Chandrasekhara prabhu, who has been the head of the main ISKCON prison project for some years now, has been surprised at how fast this has come together and the progress we’ve made. We’ve been regularly corresponding with 10 inmates in the nation’s prison systems (there are 200 throughout the nation), and these contacts have come from Chandrasekhara.

There is a great demand and interest in the prisons among both inmates and correctional staff to give Srila Prabhupada a chance to preach through his books.

Some of the goals we have set for our ministry are as follows:

1. To distribute Srila Prabhupada’s books among both inmates and correctional staff.

2. To provide inmates with opportunities to practice Krishna consciousness, thereby changing the consciousness of our nation’s prison system. This will have long-lasting implications on society as a whole.

3. To guide inmates through regular correspondence with devotees. This benefits the inmate, the one preaching, and humanity at large.

4. To provide interested family members of inmates with the same opportunities to become Krishna conscious by offering spiritual support and correspondence and by extending the service of spiritual counseling if there is no temple in the family’s area.

5. To hold regular kirtans and classes and to distribute prasadam within the prison systems.

6. To enlist as many temples and householder devotees as possible to help bring the teachings of Srila Prabhupada to these suffering souls.

7. To have a community such as a farm for inmate devotees to come to upon the completion of their full prison terms, where they can get a real taste of a life of loving devotion to Sri Krishna, with counseling to help them gradually back into mainstream society.

8. Above all else, to follow Lord Chaitanya’s edict to spread the sankirtana movement to all towns and villages. State prisons can be looked upon as towns, and jails holding a smaller population as villages.

One of Srila Prabhupada’s goals for the League of Devotees (1962) was "to take charge of moral upliftment by spiritual process, even for the criminals and prisoners of state and to accept all kinds of help and facilities from the police and governments concerned."

We really need interested devotees to take part in preaching by corresponding with inmates. It is mostly answering questions and concerns of theirs. It isn’t enough to put books into our nation’s prisons. This must be followed up by compassionate Vaishnavas who can give a little of their time to help save other fallen souls and direct them back to Godhead.

I hope this finds you all well.

Hari bol!

All glories to Srila Prabhupada

Bhakta Chris Matthews
980 South Old Sevierville Pk
Seymour TN 37865
865 577 0785

© dipika.org December 1, 2002