County chaplain counsels inmates

Monroe County Correctional Center Chaplain Steve Edwards encounters many prisoners who refuse to reform their lives, some who try but relapse, and only a few who ultimately manage to redeem themselves. \n"You've got to have tons of patience and be able to deal with a variety of personalities," he said. "You see so many capable and gifted people who are just throwing their lives away. You know, there's so much other stuff they could be doing." \nA 58-year-old former engineer and management consultant, Edwards is not an ordained minister, but a licensed mental health counselor who has provided counseling and spiritual guidance to prisoners and their families at the Monroe County jail for the past five years. \n"He's excellent," said Maj. Thurman Fuller, an assistant commander at the jail. "He's really interested in helping people." \nA devout Christian, Edwards draws his motivation to help others from the religious teachings of his church. \n"The Scriptures tell us to work with those who are down and out," he said.\nAfter being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his early 30s, Edwards gravitated further toward church work as he realized the disease would eventually prevent him from continuing his work as an engineer. For the past several years, he has served as an elder at the Sherwood Oaks Christian Church in Bloomington, partially overseeing its administration and providing spiritual guidance aside ordained ministers to members of the congregation.\n"He's here as much as his health allows," said Sherwood Oaks head pastor Tom Ellsworth. "I would say he's an inspiration to the congregation." \nWhile counseling others at the church, Edwards eventually realized he could more effectively help those he was attempting to counsel by obtaining formal training as a mental health counselor. In 1999, he received a master's degree in mental health counseling from IU and began to offer formal services through his office at the church. When Edwards' predecessor, who knew Edwards had periodically traveled to the jail to counsel some inmates and their families, asked Edwards to replace him as chaplain, he accepted the offer. \nEdwards is a warm and compassionate man whose eyes reveal sadness at many of the cases he sees at the prison.\n"Many of the same people come through again and again and again," he said. "Some of them you get to know personally." \nOne current inmate, whom he was trying to help turn his life around, is a recent source of disappointment for him. \n"Up until six weeks ago, I would have called him a success story," Edwards said. "He was out working, going to school. He was doing very well ... He had real potential, then he slipped up (and) got back on (cocaine). Now he's back in jail."\nBut Edwards is used to this kind of occurrence. \n"Eighty-five to 90 percent of the crimes that are committed have an underlying (connection) to drugs and alcohol," he said. "If it wasn't for alcohol and drugs, we probably wouldn't even need a jail." \nMost inmates, he said, are very manipulative by nature or pretend to want his help in order to improve their record of behavior while in prison. Edwards said it is important to distinguish prisoners who sincerely want to change their lives from those who don't. \n"You have to be sincere and compassionate, but balance" this on account of the inmates, he said. "You have to know when to be assertive and when to be passive." \nDespite being physically threatened at the jail and sometimes having to take knives from former prisoners who come to his Sherwood Oaks office for counseling, Edwards said the most difficult part of his job is seeing the effect inmates' imprisonment has on their children, many of whom do not understand why their parent is in jail. \n"That's super sad," he said. \nWhen the lives of those he tries to counsel improve, the lives of their children improve with them. At the moment, Edwards is most proud of a local woman he helped beat an addiction to amphetamines and other narcotics. A former stripper and mother of four, "her life was just going down the tubes," Edwards said. Now that she has been sober for the past three years, he hopes her sobriety will make her a better mother to her children. \nEdwards said he will continue to work as chaplain as long as he feels his work can have a positive effect on those he is attempting to counsel. \n"It's hard not to be cynical. We certainly are not going to run out of clientele, sadly to say," he said.\nThe rare success stories, however, make the job ultimately rewarding. \n"You get the opportunity to see people sincerely change their lives," he said. "It's not a lot, but those few are certainly the icing on the cake"