Prison Fellowship Defends Evacuation of Prisoners before Citizens
In the ensuing chaos unleashed by Hurricane Katrina, trapped citizens jeered at prisoners who were being evacuated by the authorities. But prisoners deserve to be helped, according to Prison Fellowship Ministries.
In the ensuing chaos unleashed by Hurricane Katrina, trapped citizens jeered at prisoners who were being evacuated by the authorities. But prisoners deserve to be helped, according to Prison Fellowship Ministries.
The tired, hungry, and mostly poor people ranted that prisoners were being evacuated when there was no one to help them. But prisoners are among the helpless and the destitute like many in the sea of faces in New Orleans, according to Prison Fellowship Louisiana Field Director, Ron Dinnocenzo.
“Only the dead are lower on the list to be helped than the prisoners,” he said.
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Prison Fellowship Ministries has been spreading the Gospel throughout jails for over 30 years. Experienced staff immediately jumped to help the state of Louisiana relocate entire prison populations by providing goods for the displaced prisoners.
At least 7,600 prisoners were evacuated from local jails to the 12 state prisons in the northern part of Louisiana that are now overly populated.
At one of the largest prisons, Angola State Prison in Angola, La., nearly a thousand sentenced and pre-trial detainees made do in a “tent city” on prison grounds.
Exhausted staff had worked around the clock to prepare for them, according to Kathy Fontenot, director of communications at the facility.
“We are all tired,” Fontenot told PFM. “But we will do whatever we can for the arriving inmates, many of whom are hungry and dehydrated from their experience.”
Tight space constraints also forced Angola to house both men and women, though Fontenot stressed that the two populations will remain separated.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, Pam Laborde, said the transport process was smooth and denied rumors of rioting by inmates.
However, inmates at Angola - three hours from New Orleans - were worried about their families, many of whom lived in New Orleans.
Fontenot noted the growing level of stress among the existing Angola population of 5,000, where 60 percent of the inmates are from the New Orleans area and have had no word about their relatives.
PF staff and volunteers are doing what they can to shelter, feed, and clothe the inmates, as well as their families and children.
Meanwhile, PF’s new executive director for Louisiana, Jean Bush, has been helping the state contact close to 195 churches to house the nearly 500,000 refugees migrating across the state in search of shelter.
