PRISON FELLOWSHIP: California

Rick is serving life in Folsom Prison. In two years, he hopes to be paroled. He shares his dreams for a future beyond prison walls with "Insider."

"Do you mean Jesus still loves me, despite all that I did in my past?"  the prisoner standing next to me asked.

On July 7, a young African-American man gunned down five police officers, and injured 11 others, including two civilians, at the conclusion of what had been a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest. The incident followed a series of police shootings of African-American men earlier in the year.

Living life as a Christian in prison can be challenging. Many of these men and women find themselves isolated, in the midst of a culture that doesn’t share or reflect their values, struggling to hold onto beliefs that are constantly being challenged and ridiculed.

Often in life, God redirects our paths using unexpected means. Robyn, a woman serving a prison sentence in California, knows this truth firsthand. God has used her prison time to build her faith more than she thought possible.

Robyn is a student in an intensive Christian leadership training program offered by Prison Fellowship at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.

Did you know that if you are arrested on suspicion of criminal activity, law enforcement officials can seize cash and property they believe could have been connected to the crime, in some cases without even filing criminal charges against you?

The practice is called civil asset forfeiture, and it is being used across the country to help fund some of the various police units and prosecutors’ offices that are doing the seizing of property.

International human rights activists have named parental incarceration “the greatest threat to child well-being in the U.S.,” according to The Osborne Association. Today, there are 2.7 million children with a parent behind bars.

Luna Garcia has carried that burden since the day she was born.

Nearly every fourth Tuesday of the month, a shabby batch of bicycles arrives at the gates of Folsom State Prison.

Members of the Cameron Park Rotary Club collect the misfit bicycles from a warehouse in Diamond Springs, California, and send them off to Folsom to be repaired, repainted, and restored.