ISKCON Prison Ministry question

Dervish · February 24, 2004

I just read this article:

http://www.keralanext.com/news/?id=27399

"The ISKCON philosophy says a convict is not to be blamed for his crime. It is society that is responsible because it could not impart the right lessons to the sinner."

There are people in all parts of society, even those who wear tilak, that commit crimes and go to jail. It is my understanding that each jiva is responsible for their actions.

Is the newspaper misrepresenting ISKCON and Gaudiya Vaishnavism at large as a whole, or am I grossly uninformed? I humbly ask to be educated if the latter is the case.

By the way, I'm in no way opposed to preaching to convicts.

yasodanandana · February 24, 2004

maybe you are speaking mainly of this:

"The ISKCON philosophy says a convict is not to be blamed for his crime. It is society that is responsible because it could not impart the right lessons to the sinner. "

i think it is not so precise, maybe a misinterpretation of a longer answer given by the devotee in an interview..

who commits a crime is surely personally responsible even if the society (=us) have a greatest part in creating so many gross gratificatory needs that who, for circumstances, has not the possibility to satisfy them honestly, very easily searchs and finds way to do it against any elementary law or dharma

but anyway the action of iskcon is absolutely saint and spiritual, we are not ksatryas, who, for their job, are meant to calculate exactly the faults to give the exact penalties (i hope this is the right word)........ we are (or we have to be) brahmanas, soft hearted, we apply the exact system of the acharyas that did not exclude anyone (neither us) from joining the harinama samkirtana..

in italy is extremely difficult to do it.. more than giving some prabhupada's books to some prison's (one.. two..) libraries we have not done anything.. before we had a devotee working as a guard in a very big penitentiary near florence, but now he's no more doing that job