Although the number of children in detention centers has dramatically decreased over the past 15 years, there are still an estimated 55,000 juveniles behind bars. Regardless of whether they have committed a crime, they have the right to an education that must be provided for while in the detention center.
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.
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?
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.
At Prison Fellowship, we often talk about the cost of incarceration to taxpayers. But what about those taxpayers who are paying even more than what shows up on their tax return?
Last September, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, in collaboration with two other organizations, released the report Who Pays?
“I paid my debt to society. I paid my restitution. I stayed out of trouble. Why is my criminal history always going to be at the forefront of who I am? It doesn’t define who I am anymore. To be brutally honest that bothers me, and hurts me, and worries me, but I can’t crumble.
God showed up at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison (California) the weekend of April 30.
According to one of Prison Fellowship collaborators who attended, “this was the best event they have ever done at a state institution ever!”
“The purpose of the event was to bring value to the men.
In 1994, Congress passed a crime bill that strengthened penalties for drug offenses and earmarked billions of dollars for new prison construction. Prison populations across the country boomed as a result, with recidivism rates remaining high. Drug offenses became the leading reason for incarceration, but prisons nationwide struggled to provide programming capable of breaking the cycle of incarceration, release, and rearrest.
Across the country, jails and prisons have begun implementing a new way for families and friends to stay in touch with their incarcerated loved ones: video conferencing. Heres how it works: the “visitor” would log in to a video chat from their home or private room at the facility (depending on how the prison or jail operates) and be connected to the prisoner via a screen.
When Danny Amos left prison, he entered a world that was exceedingly bizarre and foreign to him. Having spent five decades behind bars, Danny had never bought his own clothes, and didn’t even know his size. Something as common to most of us as the automatic doors at WalMart were the source of endless amazement to him.
Titles and labels serve an important role in modern society. It is unlikely anyone would submit to surgery to someone who didn’t respond to the title “doctor,” and few of us would let anyone touch our finances if they didn’t have the initials “C.P.A.”
For many of us, some of our earliest memories involve sitting on the couch and listening to mom read us stories about fanciful characters and faraway places. We remember those moments dearly, often holding onto those books and eventually reading them to our own children.
It was a big occasion every year. Each Christmas, Leah’s grandparents and aunts and uncles were eager to find out what gifts she had received from her dad.
“Christmas for our family is just huge in general. This gave Leah just something to look forward to, so that she wasn’t an outsider in the family,” explains Roni, Leah’s mom.
Based just outside of Washington, D.C., in Alexandria, Virginia, Together We Bake is more than a typical bakery.
In addition to producing granola, cookies, and other baked goods for grocery stores and restaurants in the metro D.C. area, Together We Bake creates something much more lasting—second chances for women, many of whom are attempting to reenter the workforce after a period of incarceration.
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