This year marks the 35th anniversary of the holiday season Chuck Colson spent behind bars. “Just hopelessness and despair,” he remembers of that Christmas in prison, not only for him, but also for all the men he had come to know in the months he spent incarcerated.

As a successful commodities broker, Jake Hall made a good living. After spending time in prison, though, he couldn’t even get a job washing dishes. He filled out innumerable applications, but when employers saw the checked felony box, they would tell him “no thanks,” or simply throw the application away.

A new organization in the region wants to help people who have served jail or prison time integrate more easily into the community.

The Out4Life Statewide Reentry Coalition wants to bring existing area agencies together to encourage development of church-, faith- and community-based re-entry initiatives.

Religious leaders and civil rights advocates are pressing the Department of Justice to implement national standards to help prevent an estimated 60,000 cases of prison rape each year.

Liberals and conservatives have united in calling for the U.S. attorney general to implement standards against a form of prison violence.

Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003, but even though standards were completed within 14 months, Attorney General Eric Holder has yet to implement them.

An odd coalition of religious groups, human-rights advocates and prison reformers is pushing the Obama administration to hurry new standards designed to eliminate rape in the nation’s prisons — standards that are already two months overdue.

“At this moment, standards to eradicate sexual assault in prisons await your approval,” the groups wrote in an Aug.

To keep the state afloat in treacherous economic seas, Arizona has already dumped significant public programs and services overboard. But even while battered by a $2.6 billion budget deficit, we must not sacrifice public safety to the wind and the waves.

Special Angel Tree® Edition of Tanked! Available

In the span of one year, William H. “Tank” Black went from setting the record for having the most first-round picks in the NFL draft represented by a single agent, to sitting behind bars on accusations of stealing from his clients, money-laundering, securities fraud, and illegally paying money to college players to win their business.

Learn about prison culture from those who have been there.