Old Practices in New Places: Breaking Violence through Ignatian Exercises in a Swedish Maximum Security Prison

Isolation. © Marcel Ciobam

At the high security prison Kumla in Sweden, long-term inmates wait in line for more than a year in order to be silent, without visitors, phone, newspapers, TV, and radio for a month. They voluntarily exchange the few privileges they have for "an undoubtedly painful and confrontational look inside themselves," as retreat leader Truls Bernhold puts it.¹ For about fifteen years, men incarcerated in Swedish prisons have been given the opportunity to follow a thirty-day Ignatian retreat and a prison monastery has been established within the walls of the Kumla prison. The results of offering such a retreat to prisoners have been overwhelmingly positive. As one retreatant expresses it: "Within these walls [of the monastery at Kumla prison] goodness is exploding!"²

What makes Ignatian spirituality³ a relevant resource in the secular and multi-religious context of a high-security prison? In this essay I investigate how a classic source of Christian spirituality can be appropriated in new situations, and how old practices can be undertaken in new places. More specifically, I ask how the Spiritual Exercises⁴–the way they have been retrieved and are offered in the Kumla context–can be a way to embark on a new and transformative journey for a number of the male incarcerated at Kumla prison. In particular, I identify four aspects of the Exercises that seem to be especially significant to the healing and recovery of the retreatants. When analyzing these four areas of the Exercises, I pay attention to how the selfhood of the incarcerated at Kumla is experienced as a shattered and vulnerable self (see below), and why the Exercises seem to be a helpful resource to retreatants with such a selfhood. I suggest that participation in the retreat provides the participants with tools that help them process their experiences, which includes both their crimes and guilt, as well the violations they themselves have been subject to, not to speak of the care and love most of them have been missing throughout their lives. Thus, trauma not only concerns the inflicted, abused, and violated, but also those having caused inflictions, violations, or abuse to others.

The essay unfolds in the following way: First, I briefly describe the monastery and retreat project at Kumla. Second, I sketch out my analytical lens, including some theoretical perspectives. Third, in the main part of the essay, I look into four areas of the Exercises that have proven to be life transforming for some of the retreatants at Kumla. Finally, I argue that old spiritual resources can be retrieved and undertaken in new ways, also in unlikely places, such as in the Kumla prison context.

The material analyzed in the essay consists of various written sources such as extensive articles and reports written by journalists who have visited the Kumla prison, other reports, and a few smaller academic pieces. I am aware that there are methodological challenges in using such diverse materials, as the various documents are situated in different contexts with different aims.⁵

Historically, the Exercises were almost exclusively offered in Catholic monasteries and various retreat centers. However, there seems to be a potential for engaging in this kind of spirituality also outside the specific Catholic sphere. For example, a diverse student body at Union Theological Seminary has been invited to make the Exercises,⁶ and in a traditional Lutheran, but also highly secular Scandinavian context, Ignatian spirituality has proven to be a viable alternative for both pastors⁷ and prisoners, in addition to church employees, Christian lay persons, and seekers more generally.⁸ In this essay, then, I seek to show what a gift this spiritual practice can be outside of the traditional, religious sphere.

As with the offering of meditation and yoga in US and UK prisons, the undertaking of spiritual practices during incarceration is a way to improve the potential for inmate rehabilitation.⁹ Strongly inspired by the Kumla case, an equivalent project has been launched at Halden prison in...