A new chapel was dedicated at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl on Thursday, with the daughter of one of America’s most popular evangelists giving the keynote speech.
Ruth Graham, a Christian minister widely known as the daughter of Pastor Billy Graham, previously conducted a webinar series with inmates through a moral rehabilitation program and promised to make an in-person appearance.
Graham fulfilled her promise Thursday morning during a ribbon-cutting held for the chapel as a group of Mississippi Correctional Institute for Women inmates who recently graduated from a New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary program and others who are currently enrolled in the program sat in attendance.
“I cannot express how grateful I am to be here and for the opportunity. I’m so impressed with what’s going on — the plans that they have — because this is transformation,” Graham said. “This is not reformation, and that’s what we’re all about.”
Governor Tate Reeves, who was also present alongside MDOC Commissioner Burl Cain, said the chapel is not only a facility for people to gather and grow in their faith but also a symbol of hope for all Mississippians.
“To actually cut the ribbon at this facility is just an inspiring thing for me personally and really for all the people of Mississippi because it gives the inmates in this facility and others across the state hope,” Reeves said. “It’s clear that the focus of the Mississippi Department of Corrections is for those that are entrusted with their (inmates’) care to ensure that when they get out, they have an opportunity for success in life.”
Cain is hopeful that as the department’s prisoner rehabilitation program gains more momentum throughout the state, recidivism rates will be reduced and crime will begin to drop in areas with a high volume of gang activity.
“As you build these churches and they become groups, then the gangs go away,” Commissioner Cain said. “So if people belong to the church and become moral, we have less recidivism because they’re not coming back to prison. If we change people morally, then we really do rehabilitate them.”
Cain also noted that MDOC plans to add nine more chapels in prisons across the state, two of which ahve already been fully funded by the Mississippi Prison Chapel Foundation.
