In addition to graduating from the Academy program, Jasmine is also working on a bachelor's degree in communications. Her goal is to use her education one day to help other prisoners. "So many people turn their backs on us," she says. "We're not the labels people have put on us."

One of the best decisions she ever made, she says, was enrolling in the Academy from the beginning of her second prison sentence.

The fellowship Meredith has experienced with the other women has influenced her greatly. They are "people that just take you where you’re at, and the grace—the astronomical grace! People that actually want to care about you and want to help you succeed. It doesn't feel superficial like so many of my other relationships … It's a humble confidence—knowing who you are deeply rooted in Christ, you don't need anybody externally to tell you about yourself."

ANGELINA: A TIME TO BLOOM

When Angelina first came to prison, she felt lost and helpless. Those feelings are all too common behind bars.

"A lot of times when women come into our program, they are broken, and they don't feel like they have a hope," Angelina shares. But then these women participate in the Academy. "They're going through first quarter, second quarter, third quarter—and then in fourth quarter you start to really see them change and bloom and be just who they are and [who] God made them to be."

Angelina needed a community to speak life into her, and God has used the Academy to do just that. Today, she says, "I'm courageous, and I'm strong." Although she is serving a life sentence, Angelina lives missionally. She mentors the other women in Shakopee and consistently comes up with new and creative ways to serve her incarcerated community.

PRISONERS NEED COMMUNITY

An in-prison program like the Academy that prepares incarcerated men and women for reentry can move mountains. "This is not a soft-on-crime approach [to corrections]," explains Warden Beltz. "This is the stuff we know works to keep people out of prison. [Prisoners] need those community connections. They need people to support them in their reentry. They need people that are going to hold them accountable to do the right thing, while encouraging them."

For women like Jasmine, Meredith, and Angelina, their time in the Academy has seen them grow and mature. Jasmine has become a better parent to her children, even though she is incarcerated. Since this interview, Meredith has been released from Shakopee and is already giving back and serving her new community. And Angelina has embraced her life sentence by committing to serving her fellow prisoners, changing the culture from within.

"When you promote that [life] can be bigger than just a prison—do your time and get out—it does something to the psyche and to the population," Warden Beltz says. The women "start seeing things [differently]. They start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel."

"We've come here [to prison] because we have done something wrong," says Angelina. "To be able to have that second chance means everything."