PRISON FELLOWSHIP BLOG: Prison & Prisoners

Prison Fellowship is pleased to announce the expansion of its “Prisoners to Pastors” program to the Cristina Melton Crain Prison in Gatesville, Texas.  Forty inmates will be participating in the program, which provides seminary-level education and training in prisons.

Facilitated by Prison Fellowship volunteers and in cooperation with The Urban Ministry Institute (TUMI) of World Impact, the Prisoners to Pastors program offers former lawbreakers the chance to become leaders of the Church behind bars and after they return to the community.

At a graduation ceremony for students completing Prison Fellowship’s four-year Prisoners to Pastors program, a tearful dad confessed to me, “I thought my son would never complete anything but a prison sentence!”

We were at South Bay Correctional Institution in Florida.

Prison can be a dark place, full of dangerous personalities and corrosive influences. Inmates who want to follow Christ must fight against a tide that threatens to push them back into old behaviors and thought patterns. Other inmates might be curious about Jesus, but, cynical about the value of “religion,” they balk at the idea of attending a chapel service.

"I delivered my baby girl, shackled to a hospital bed, in a vulnerable position exposed to all, without family and only corrections officers by my side."

I am not sure what prevented me from committing suicide. I had traveled a long, lonely road. I let circumstances from my childhood and young adult life boil inside me, until I felt angry at the whole world. I had thought that if I helped everyone around me and did everything they asked of me, they would like me, and I would find the happiness I craved.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of prisoners who otherwise couldn’t provide Christmas gifts for their children do so through Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program. In 2012, some Arizona prisoners decided to give back—in the amount of $3,300.

La Palma Correctional Center, a prison privately operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, houses 3,100 men in several compounds.

Jeffrey Leonard never expected to be free from a lifelong cycle of crime and addiction. He envisioned himself going back behind the walls every time he was released. “The first thing I’d do when I left prison was buy a gun,” he confesses.

Since Marloen's arrival at Folsom Prison, he's been struggling to survive. It's a daily battle not to lose his family, get dragged into fights with other prisoners, or just plain lose hope.

A devastating fire ripped through a Honduran prison today killing at least 300 prisoners. Here is more from the Associated Press on what they are saying is one of the world’s deadliest fires in decades:

Some 475 people escaped from the prison in the town of Comayagua and 356 are missing and presumed dead, said Hector Ivan Mejia, a spokesman for the Honduras Security Ministry.

In her mug shot, 24-year-old Karen* looks like a frail child, but she has five young children of her own.

In April 2011, the nation’s last island prison officially closed. McNeil Island Corrections Center, which many referred to as the “good cop” to Alcatraz’s “bad cop,” was located in Puget Sound just west of Steilacoom, Washington, 700 miles north of its more infamous counterpart.

The Supreme Court demands end to prison overcrowding, ruling that California prisons violate the rights to appropriate medical and mental health care.

Sexual abuse is an uncomfortable topic, but it is a terrible reality for many men and woman inside and out of prison. 

Pat Lewis, program manager of a Prison Fellowship faith-based reentry unit in New Zealand, held this belief dear to his heart: that the prisoners and ex-prisoners he passionately served were no different than he was, and must be treated as individuals worthy of dignity and respect.

Prison Fellowship is pleased to announce the re-launch of Inside Journal®, a newspaper written to appeal to the unique needs and interests of the prison population. Distributed through chaplains free of charge, Inside Journal delivers timely, inspirational content—and most importantly the Gospel—to inmates who might otherwise never have access to it.