CT Mirror photo
John Santa (at right in photo) on a 2016 visit to the Osborn prison facility in Somers.
John Santa first went to prison in 1997. He wasn’t there because of any crime he had committed. He went to visit a friend who was serving a four-year sentence for embezzlement, and came away from that brief encounter a passionate advocate for criminal justice reform.
Santa shared that story on the latest episode of WNHH’s “Criminal Justice Insider with Babz Rawls-Ivy and Jeff Grant.” He told how he went from being the CEO of a successful family-run, Bridgeport-based energy company to the founder and director of the criminal justice reform nonprofit, the Malta Justice Initiative.
Santa said that the comprehensive suffering and sense of hopelessness and inadequacy that he saw amongst the prisoners at the Enfield Correctional Institution those two decades ago forever changed his life. He said that he is now “serving a life sentence” to a religious and political and philanthropic mission to help the incarcerated and to reduce Connecticut’s overall prison population.
In 1996, Santa’s longtime friend and company lawyer, Stan Kennedy, was convicted of embezzling money from his corporate clients, including from Santa. Kennedy was sent to Enfield for a four-year stint.
“I was so befuddled by this,” Santa said. “I much more expected him to be at the Algonquin Club, having a nice lunch, and here he is in prison.”
One year later, Kennedy sent personalized letters to Santa and his business partners, apologizing for stealing money from them and requesting their forgiveness.
Santa read the letter again and again. He said that the letter recalled one of the basic tenets of his Roman Catholic faith.
“Thank God for [my family’s] Roman Catholic Christian faith,” he said, “which taught us how to forgive.”
He decided to visit Kennedy at Enfield to better understand how this friend had ended up behind bars. He was also curious to know what life was like for people in prison, a population he had up until that point had no contact with.
The conditions he saw and the people he met at Enfield forever changed his life.
“When I went to prison,” Santa said, “and I looked around, and I saw who was there, I said: wait a minute. These people are sick. Nine out of 10 are mentally ill and/or addicted. They’re poor. We manufacture poverty in prison. If they aren’t poor coming in, they’ll be poor coming out.”
He said that first visit helped him understand that state’s sick and poor were conveniently “colocated” in prison. He noted that, in the mid-1990s, Connecticut had upwards of 20,000 prisoners incarcerated throughout the state.
In 1996 Santa belonged to the Order of Malta, a medieval religious order of Roman Catholic men and women who work on behalf of the sick and the poor. He said the order’s calling to help the sick and the poor overlapped perfectly with the population he saw in prison.
“I went to my friends at the Order of Malta,” he said, “and I said, you know, not for nothing, but if you’re thinking sick and poor, I’ve got some sick and poor for you. I’ve got a lot of them. And they’re all in one place. They’re a captive audience, literally and figuratively.”
When some of his colleagues in the Order balked at the idea of helping convicted murderers, drug dealers, rapists and sex offenders, Santa’s response was a simple one: “What do you think Christ would do?”
He quoted Matthew 25:31, in which Jesus praises his true followers for giving him something to eat when he was hungry, for giving him something to drink when he was thirsty, for looking after him when he was sick, and for visiting him when he was in prison.
“It’s right there, in plain English,” Santa said. “Read it. Hello. If this is what Matthew’s telling us about what Christ said about the Kingdom, that means that these people in prison are special friends of his.”
In 2004, Santa convinced the Order to give him a $25,000 grant to make and distribute Bibles with special study guides and prayers for people in prison.
Working under the name of the Malta Prison Volunteers of Connecticut (MPVCT), Santa said that he and his colleagues brought The Malta Bible and The Malta Prayer Book to all 20 prisons in Connecticut.
He said that the order embraced prison ministry as its national work in 2005, and that it currently conducts prison ministry in 37 states and in Canada.
But Santa was not satisfied with only working on developing inmates’ faith while behind bars. He also saw the need to help them reintegrate into society upon release.
“Their faith cannot sustain them,” he said. “It will help them, but they also need jobs.”
He and his colleagues at the ‑rder thus started the Prodigal Project, in which they spoke with churches, synagogues, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, and other community groups throughout the state about the wisdom of hiring formerly incarcerated people.
He said that they spoke with 45 different Connecticut organizations about employment after incarceration, but that they were only able to get one job for one recently released inmate.
Santa said he learned a valuable lesson from that effort. He learned that most people in Connecticut were completely unaware of the workings and inefficiencies and prejudices of the criminal justice system.
He said that many had no idea about hyperincarceration, about the public costs of prisons, about how the United States is the only Western country that still has the death penalty.
“We’ve got this mass of ignorance,” he said. “But when the people heard this, when they became informed, they said: this isn’t right. This won’t do. This is no good for anybody.”
Santa said that the mission of the Malta Justice Initiative is to advocate, inform and education the Connecticut public about opportunities in criminal justice reform. He said that they recently published a book, The Justice Imperative, which serves as a kind of companion to Michelle Alexander’s landmark mass incarceration study, The New Jim Crow.
“We are not lobbyists,” he said. “We are advocates. We don’t get paid to do what we do, and we’re not doing this for ourselves. We’re doing this on behalf of a cause that we think is important.”
Santa said that he retired from his job as CEO at Santa Energy Corporation in 2004, but that he plans on working in criminal justice reform for as long as he is able.
“To those whom much is given,” he said, “much is expected.”
Previous “Criminal Justice Insider” articles:
- Ganim Describes Path Back From Prison
- Transition Time For Teens In Trouble
- Parole Holds A Key To Reentry Puzzle
- Organizer Takes “Sawdust-On-Floor” Tack
- Female Ex-Offenders Band Together
- German-Inspired Reform Calms Prison
- Son’s Arrest Helped Shape Porter’s Politics
“Criminal Justice Insider” airs every first and third Friday of the month on WNHH FM at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Listen to the full interview with by clicking on the audio player or Facebook Live video below.
“Criminal Justice Insider” is sponsored by Family ReEntry and The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.