BROTHER’S KEEPER
‘We call this place a three-quarter house: Three hots and a cot, plus. The plus is ministry.’
SARA ANNE CORRIGAN
CORRESPONDENT
Here is an irony: Among the “criminal element” in our society, America’s most wanted tend to become America’s least wanted once they have paid their debt to society. Often shunned by their families, finding work, finding a place to live and establishing a new healthy lifestyle can present insurmountable challenges for convicts who generally are paroled with little more than the clothes on their backs, said Bob Collins, director of Brother’s Keeper, a residential facility for recently paroled men that opened last September on Evansville’s near-North Side. Collins maintains a prison ministry at the Branchville State Prison, he said. And what he has observed is this: “They come out of prison and since they have nowhere else to go, they return to the only lifestyle they have known: the old neighborhood, the old surroundings, old friends, old habits … and they end up back in prison. “Many cycle through two or three times, spending 10 years or more in prison. … They are usually open for change but lack a way to embrace change.
The life skills are missing,” he said. Brother’s Keeper is more than a halfway house: It offers an environment designed to meet men’s spiritual and physical needs and to give them the life skills they are missing to help them break the cycle of recidivism. “We call this place a three-quarter house: Three hots and a cot, plus. The plus is ministry,” Collins said, adding that Brother’s Keeper’s ministry involves meeting each resident at whatever level he is in life and working forward from that point. Mark Farmer, 51, originally from the greater Louisville area, was Brother’s Keeper’s first resident. He moved in on Sept. 27, the day he was paroled from the Branchville Correctional Facility.
“I hit a bad patch,” Farmer confesses, explaining it cost him his job, his family, his home and about two years of his life.
“I met Bob (Collins) at Branchville. … I became a church deacon at Branchville. You’d be surprised: There is a very vibrant church inside ‘the fence.’” It’s where he met Vernon Roberts, 33, of Vincennes. Roberts allows he has “an extensive criminal background,” that will stand in the way of his attempts to move back into society as a productive member . But, he says, thanks to Farmer, Collins and Brother’s Keeper, he now has goals. He has hope.
He moved into Brother’s Keeper upon his release from Branchville on Nov. 1.
“We needed this place. We’d be homeless. … This is a better environment (than a homeless shelter) but you have to be in the right frame of mind; this is not a flop house,” Farmer said.
Men who come to Brother’s Keeper do so voluntarily and by invitation from the board of directors.
“We work with judges and parole officers,” Collins said, adding that Brother’s Keeper does not accept violent offenders or those convicted of sex crimes.
Residents can stay from six months to two years; their comings and goings are carefully monitored. They must demonstrate their motivation to complete their educations and do whatever else is necessary to secure employment and save enough money to move into their own homes.
There are a lot of rules, Collins said. “But they are not hard; they are rules that any citizen would be expected to follow.”
A violation equals expulsion, he said.
Residents are charged a $70per-week stipend (which they repay once they secure employment) to help defray the cost of running the place. Brother’s Keeper receives no state or federal funds, Collins said, explaining that it is a Christian- based operation and the founders decided they did not want the restrictions that state and federal funding would entail.
“We want to be free to pray,” Collins said simply.
“We are faith-based, but that’s as far as it goes,” Collins said. “We do not preach here, and men do not have to be Christians to come here.”
“We do not call our men ‘convicts’ or ‘jail birds,’ we call them ‘returning citizens,’” Collins said.
“Our goal is to turn them into taxpayers.”
ERIN MCCRACKEN / Courier & Press
Bob Collins, center, director of Brother’s Keeper, talks with Isaac Kennedy, left, and Vernon Roberts and other residents during the weekly Bible study at Brother’s Keeper on West Illinois Street. Brother’s Keeper is a faith-based residential facility for recently paroled men.
Jameson Sittloh reads from the book Ephesians during the weekly Bible study at Brother’s Keeper at Brother’s Keeper at 114 W. Illinois St.
ABOVE: Members of the Brother’s Keeper weekly Bible study group bow their heads and say a prayer before the start of the meeting. Collins, second from left, and his wife, Kay Collins, second from right, lead the weekly meeting and ministry. RIGHT: Mark Farmer, who leads the group in an opening prayer, became active in Bible studies at Branchville Correctional Facility where he met Collins, who was doing a ministry. Farmer, who was released in September, had no place to go and came to Brother’s Keeper to help get back on his feet.
ERIN MCCRACKEN / Courier & Press
SideBar to Article: --------
Brother’s Keeper had its start from Promise Keepers group
Robert Collins, a retired “20-year man” in the U.S. Air Force, serves on the board of the Tri-State Men’s Center, a local group that came out of the Promise Keepers men’s movement of the mid-1990s. That movement lost steam, Collins said, and the local group gathered for a “what do we do now?”
meeting, out of which Brother’s Keeper eventually emerged.
The facility opened its doors last September and is set up to house a maximum of 20 men.
Brother’s Keeper depends entirely on gifts and donations. It is staffed entirely by volunteers.
For more information about the work of Brother’s Keeper or to learn how to aid its ministry, contact Collins at (812) 455-2252.
