Boston’s roughest neighborhoods are hardly foreign territory to Luis Rodrigues. At 11 years old, he began roaming those streets as a crack dealer. That lifestyle continued for years, until his life was nearly taken from him.
One night in 2008, Luis was shot repeatedly at close-range.
Kate Boccia knows what it’s like to struggle with a loved one behind bars. When her son, Daniel, was sentenced to 15 years behind bars for armed robbery, she experienced all the emotional and financial struggles that come with having an incarcerated family member.
Speaking in front of an eager crowd at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, on June 20, U.S. Senator John Cornyn of Texas laid out his vision for criminal justice reform. Cornyn, the current majority whip of the U.S. Senate, has worked hard to steer the Republican Party towards supporting a comprehensive reform of the criminal justice system, while also building coalitions with like-minded pro-reform individuals across the aisle.
At 23 years old, Weldon Angelos had found himself behind bars facing a 55-year sentence as a first time, nonviolent offender.
He was resigned to his fate that he would not be released until he was at least 79 years old.
There is little debate remaining that the United States has a significant problem with the recidivism of former prisoners. Department of Justice statistics show that one-third of released prisoners are rearrested in their first year outside prison walls. Within three years, that number jumps to 50 percent, and then to 75 percent over five years.
When another man confessed to the string of murders for which Davontae Sanford had been convicted, he felt that his long nightmare was over.
Arrested at age 14, Sanford had spent nine years in the Michigan corrections system. Now, with his conviction overturned, it appeared that he could once again return to his community and begin to piece his life together again.
There’s a little taste of Honduras in Skagit County, Washington. It’s called the Underground Coffee Project, a business run by a group of former prisoners who roast and sell an artisan blend of Honduran coffee beans.
It began as the vision of Bob Ekblad, who led in-prison Bible studies and built friendships with the men behind bars.
In 1992, Bryan Kelley was sentenced to life for murdering a man in a drug deal gone bad. As many in his situation have done, he spent time during his first few months in prison reflecting on his past decisions and regretting previous choices.
When Robert Wickham was released from prison in 2011, he felt that he had been held captive for long enough. He had not lived a life of true freedom. Since dropping out of high school, Robert struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, losing jobs and ruining relationships along the way.
It is no secret that the last several decades have not been kind to the city of Detroit. Once a thriving center of industry and the undisputed champion of automobile manufacturing, Detroit has seen its population shrink, its unemployment rates skyrocket, and its infrastructure crumble.
By the time he was 21, Jason Hernandez was already serving a life sentence in a federal prison. Arrested for running a 50-person drug distribution ring he inherited when his older brother J.J. was sent to prison, Hernandez figured he would be out and back on the streets within 24 hours.
In just a month, Indiana will be closing one of its minimum security prisons, Henryville Correctional Facility–a move which will hopefully assist the state’s new emphasis on corrections reform.
In 2014, the Indiana House of Representatives passed legislation that reroutes prisoners from state facilities into local jails.
If there was something someone could have said or done that would have changed the path that led you here, what would it have been?
The question is a simple one, yet full of profundity. It is nearly universal in application—who among us doesn’t have a past decision that we lament?
Every race has a finish line. But what happens when that line gets pushed farther out making it virtually unreachable?
That’s how it can feel for men and women entering society after completing their prison term. Though their “debt to society” has been paid, payday never ends since many former prisoners find themselves wading through a “second prison,” further locking them into a life with limited choices.
On May 25, mere steps from the Supreme Court Building in Washington, DC, Prison Fellowship announced the launch of the Faith and Justice Fellowship. The new bipartisan collaboration brings together a disparate group of policy makers from various faith traditions, united in a desire to promote restorative values in the criminal justice system.