‘Prison conditions good in Seychelles’ |24 October 2014

Prisons all over the world house people created by God to do great things for His kingdom, but who have somehow lost their way.

Not because prisoners have done something wrong that they should be locked up in appalling conditions, said Brad Senekal, African Outreach director of Hand of Hope – Joyce Meyer Ministries, who is impressed with the prison conditions here.

“To be honest the conditions the inmates experience while being locked up in the prison in Seychelles are better than I expected; it certainly is good from a regional perspective. It seems the team, staff and leadership of the prison are currently involved in a lot of projects, have a lot of good plans, and the thinking is very progressive,” Mr Senekal told Sports Nation in a recent interview.

“I was also impressed with the prison greening programme, agriculture programmes in place, the amount of infrastructural and programmatic development going on in the prison system. Most exciting for me is the work of the prison chaplain, Father Brian Volcère. I cannot speak highly enough of his integrity and commitment to helping the inmates to a place of total transformation.

“The counselling programme that is going on is very good, especially the restorative justice programme which is still in its early stages.  There is also the desire to rehabilitate, reintegrate and reunite inmates with families. Religion is also playing a key part of this process, as a spiritually mature individual can overcome the pressure to resort to being bitter, harboring unforgiveness, hopelessness and also decide not to return to their same old ways that brought them into prison in the first place,” explained Mr Senekal.

Asked to compare the conditions in prisons here with prisons in Africa and Europe, Mr Senekal replied: “The condition in many prisons in Africa is appalling. Often there is a lack of food and humanitarian violence abound. Although there are still some challenges in the prison here, I wish I could show prisoners in Seychelles how good their conditions are compared to some other countries in the region. Unfortunately, I do not have any personal experience of prisons in Europe and other parts of the world.”

Mr Senekal who works in the Joyce Meyer Ministries Cape Town office in South Africa, the regional office for Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, explained that among the challenges faced by the prison in Seychelles are keeping order, trying to make sure people take part in programmes that are available to them, and sometimes prisoners make certain demands that are not reasonable.

“I was able to personally shake the hands of about 600 prisoners, give them a small gift, a hygiene bag, a Joyce Meyer book in French and copies of the same book translated in Somali were given to the Somali prisoners and a letter from my ministry. The Somalis were surprisingly positive about their experience in the system and I spoke to recovering drug addicts who were deeply encouraged by the messages we brought. We were able to share our testimony and remind the inmates that God loves them, that there are people outside the country who love them and are praying for them.  We helped them realise that they are not alone.  Very often society can look down on prisoners, can treat them as bad people, but sometimes those people have made the decisions because they come from a broken family or have not had a father in their lives, have not had good values when they were being raised. So we should not always be so quick to judge people.  We’ve encouraged prisoners to think that there are people who do not judge them, people who love them and that God still loves them,” explained Mr Senekal.

Hand of Hope is the outreach mission arm of Joyce Meyer ministries and its mission is to help hurting people, to alleviate human suffering, and help Christians grow in their faith.

Mr Senekal added that they travel to different parts of the world and not only tell people about God’s love, but actually show them.
Born Pauline Joyce Hutchison, Joyce Meyer is a charismatic Christian author and speaker. She has TV and radio shows broadcasted to two-thirds of the planet in over 70 different languages. Mrs Meyer has written over 100 books which have been translated into well over 100 languages.