PRISON FELLOWSHIP BLOG: Advocacy & Reentry

As the wildfires raging through much of California continue to stretch the abilities and resources of professional firefighters, assistance is coming from an unexpected source—men in the California corrections system.

Nearly 4,000 prisoners have joined forces with roughly 6,000 firefighting professionals in an attempt to tame the fires that have burned 117,960 acres so far, and threaten thousands of homes and businesses. 

When asked how many prisoners he hopes to ultimately reach with the program, Ludeman simply responds, “Millions.”

The community reentry team connected Albert with Paving the Way, one of Prison Fellowship's reentry partners that helps former prisoners in their search for employment.

In 1993, a teenager named Oshea Israel shot and killed 20-year-old Laramiun Byrd at a party both were attending in Minneapolis.  Israel was sentenced to 25 years behind bars for second-degree murder, while the mother of the victim was sentenced to life without her only child.

For all the contentious, divisive issues that have recently dominated national headlines, there is one policy issue that continues to receive broad, bipartisan support—the need for meaningful sentencing and corrections reforms in the United States.  And with new efforts by President Obama to highlight the need for changes, the time may be right for a significant transformation in how we view prisons and the men and women inside them.

It’s altogether too easy for those of us with little or no connection to prison to dismiss and ignore the men and women behind bars.  Content to live our own lives, we are quick to conclude that the incarcerated “got what they had coming to them,” and to write them off as inconsequential.

Denise Harris is the field director for Prison Fellowship in Detroit, Michigan.

On a beautiful summer day, nearly 70 former prisoners, mentors, and Prison Fellowship staff descended upon the rolling hills of the Colombiere Conference and Retreat Center in Clarkston, Michigan, for a day they’d never forget.

For many prisoners, the challenges and difficulties that come with incarceration don’t end when they leave prison for the outside world.  Free from the monotonous routine and structured environment of prison, these men and women are thrown into a world that is unfamiliar, with little (if any) support structure, few contacts that will do anything other than lead them to reoffending, and bearing a “scarlet letter” that makes it virtually impossible to establish themselves as productive members of society.

Shine Adams is employing those society deems "unemployable" and giving them a hope for a new future.

For years, Jacob Maclin was the bane of the Milwaukee police force.  A gang member and drug dealer, Maclin had been arrested so many times that a collection of his mugshots could serve as a timeline of his troubled past.  His enmity toward law enforcement was real and deep, but was particularly focused on one man, a hard-nosed, old school cop named Ray Robakowski.

Last year, Bob celebrated his 90th birthday inside Minnesota's only level five maximum-security prison, Oak Park Heights. Bob has led Bible studies there since the late 1990s.

Please pray that Steve will continue to live his life for Jesus, and that God will give him many more opportunities to point others who are still in prison to the hope that he’s found.

There are many challenges facing men and women as they leave prison and return to their communities.  For some, there is the difficulty of simply finding a place to live.  For others, there is the danger of falling into old habits and renewing old acquaintances.