In the days and weeks following Chuck Colson’s passing, there has been much talk about his legacy. Most articles and reflections have focused on how Chuck moved from White House “hatchet man” to the founder of a Christian outreach to prisoners and their families. Others have looked at his commitment to establishing a Christian worldview, his role in bringing evangelicals and Roman Catholics together to work on a shared social agenda, or his co-drafting of the Manhattan Declaration.
Somewhat less attention has been spent on the legacy of Chuck Colson as a reformer of the justice system. Yet this was an issue that animated Chuck from the moment he left Maxwell Prison in 1975. In 1983, he established Justice Fellowship, a program dedicated to bringing biblical standards to bear on the criminal justice system.
A Dallas Morning News commentary reflects on Chuck’s role as prison reformer. It focuses on Chuck’s willingness to defy convention, and to take stands on issues that were often ignored by fellow evangelicals:
. . . [O]nly a conservative like Colson, even one with his craven past, could credibly challenge lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-keys views of criminal justice. He tapped his connections in conservative political circles to lobby for bipartisan, legislative reforms in the criminal justice system. In the late 1990s, his prison ministry established a mostly Christian outreach program in a wing of a minimum-security prison near Houston, an initiative that has expanded to Minnesota.
The article mentions a number of legislative reforms enacted with the help of Justice Fellowship, including the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, and the Second Chance Act of 2007.
The full Dallas Morning News editorial is available here.