Trusting the Untrustworthy: The Theology,Practice and Implications of Faith-Based Volunteers’ Work with Ex-Prisoners 1

Abstract

This article analyses the nature of trust involved in mentoring ex-prisoners. Literature outlines understandings of well-placed trust as dependent upon the motivations of the trust parties, placed in those who are perceived to be trustworthy, or placed in those who have the potential to be trust-responsive. This article describes how faith-based volunteer mentors’ motivations to serve God rather than save man facilitated their bestowal of unearned trust on their ex-prisoner protégés and how this gift of trust was capable of potentiating a trustworthy response. It also describes how this proactive trust was well-placed in some who failed to be trustworthy because it encouraged open and honest communication of this failure. As a result, it argues in some circumstances it could be intelligent to place trust proactively without evidence of trustworthiness, and that trust of this kind could be especially important to people released from prison.