ALPHA CONQUERS PRISONS

Alpha, an introductory Course to the Christian faith is quietly spreading throughout Britain's prisons. Its techniques are so powerful that it is transforming the most brutal inmates. An inmate changed through Alpha is Shane Taylor, convicted for two attempted murders and provoking prison riots. He was treated as a Category A prisoner. He spent most of his days in segregation. For months at a time, his food would be delivered through a secure hatch in his door, and he would be escorted to the showers by officers in full riot gear. He was put on the "ghost train", as inmates call it, getting moved from maximum security jail to maximum security jail. Whenever he was put back in a wing, he would inevitably start trouble. His standard tactic was to retreat to his cell after a fight, strip naked so he was less easy to restrain, and wait to do battle with the officers. The Home Office came to know him as one of the six most dangerous prisoners in the country. He did his Alpha Course in 2005, while at HMP Long Lartin, and it actually happened by mistake. One day an officer opened his door and said he had to go to an educational class. When he arrived he was told he wasn't on the list, and directed to the chapel. It was midway through the Alpha Course. He sat at the back for a moment and was considering leaving when a fellow inmate told him to stay for the free coffee and biscuits. Tempted, Taylor signed up immediately. The message of forgiveness attracted him. "I had always thought there were good and bad people," he says. "I thought I was so bad that I was going straight to hell no matter what I did." A few weeks later, when the Course had reached its Holy Spirit session, the chaplain prayed for him in tongues. "I remember feeling daft, but he asked me to pray as well. And I just said, 'God, if You are real, come into my life, because I hate the way I am.' Then the chaplain and I started talking and I started feeling an energy in my stomach. This feeling rose up and I stopped talking. I started to feel my eyes bubble up, and I just sobbed and sobbed. I knew God was real then." As ferociously as he had thrown himself into violent crime, he became a zealous Christian. The officers were, obviously, incredu-lous. He lost friends, too. "People would mock me and I wouldn't care." Unwavering, he helped out on two further Alpha Courses. The officers began to accept they had been proven wrong. That's not to say there weren't relapses. "I had an incident with an inmate where he pulled a knife on me and I just flipped and tried to grab him into my cell," he recalls. "After that incident, I shut the door and fell to my knees and started crying. I thought, 'I'm still the same person.'" The chaplain reassured him that simply being penitent meant he had changed. Things take time. This year Taylor is about to start working for CFEO, promoting the charity in the Northeast. He's repentant for his crimes, which, if pressed, he puts down to a combination of mental illness and a chaotic childhood. "There's no excuse for what I've done, though. I wish I had never done it." He has been out for seven years without reoffending. It's impossible to imagine where he would have been now, if he hadn't ended up in the chapel that day. "I'll tell you what was on my mind before I became a Christian, what I was planning to do when I would be released. There were two prison officers that I was going to find. I was going to tie these officers, brutalise them a bit, and kill their families in front of them. I was going to say to them, 'Look what you've done.' And then kill them, too." But thankfully, he encountered Jesus just in time! [Charlie Burton, Joel News International 907 / 03/06/2014].