February 2010

In January 2010 a consultative meeting was organized at the initiative of the leadership of the Târgu Mureş prison for some Non-Government Organizations (NGO's) that were interested in ameliorating the situation of the prisoners. Three Therapy Centre (TC) staff members attended the meeting from the Bonus Pastor Foundation: Gyula Bodó-Tóth, Éva Adorján and Éva Bartha. The purpose of the meeting was to start a project in which each organization could take its part. The Deputy Director of the prison, Erika Csibi, who is also a psychologist and two other psychologists, Réka Kovács and Borbála Becsky, from the Familia Family-Help Association, discussed together with the TC staff in what specific ways they could get involved in the project. They made a decision that, on the basis of an official cooperation agreement, BPF staff would regularly pay a visit to the prison to provide a so-called group activity, which actually meant group therapy.

The weekly prison-visits began in February. The themes of the planned group meetings were: self-knowledge, developing communication skills, conflict-control, aggression-control, empathy and, above all, prevention (of being re-incarcerated). Those prisoners who were selected to participate in the group activity had committed various kinds of criminal acts from theft, fraud and hooliganism to murder. They were all young, between the ages of 18 and 20, Romanians and Hungarians, but they were mainly selected by the criteria of who could speak Hungarian, because they have very few group activities in the prison in Hungarian. It came to light to us that a huge percentage of the prisoners had committed criminal acts under the influence of alcohol. Our aim with the group activity was to show them another way of thinking, another type of attitude and to get some understanding about addiction. Beyond that, we made the name of the Bonus Pastor Foundation more known there, so that if somebody was released they would know that there is a place and an organization that helps with these problems.

Another phase of the prison-visit project was when the prisoners came to visit the Rehabilitation Centre in Ozd. János Boros received them. As he related, there were seven prisoners, three guards and three women – two psychologists (one of them was the Deputy Director of the prison) and a social worker. It turned out that they were also officers. The boys of the long-term therapy program showed them “the House” (the Therapy Centre) and escorted them around the property and the Radak- Castle. For safely reasons there was no common activity organized with the residents, and during lunchtime the guards asked the TC staff to provide a separate table for the prisoners where they could eat. This is how János Boros remembers the visit: “I had a feeling that the prisoners weren’t really interested in what was happening here, they came for the joy of the trip. They had no questions, they rather preferred to drink coffee and play ping-pong. They were approximately the age-group of 18-20, both Romanians and Hungarians. We sat down and had a discussion with the three ladies; they seemed to be very interested in the Portage-model that we use. They were open to coming back again sometime in the spring for three days to take a closer look at our work. They also talked about the difficulties of their own work. They left after lunch. I did not hear any comment from the residents’ side in the Therapy Centre. Before the prisoners’ visit they were a little bit worried, but basically they had a very sensible attitude during the visit.” This is how Monika Suba, one of the two psychologists, tells about her impressions: ”The visit to Ozd gave me a great positive impression, it was more than the fact that I liked it, the work there is really useful and it is done rofessionally."