"I don't believe that God allowed me to leave prison so that I could kick up my feet and enjoy life. There's a lot of men who have done less than what I've done and are still in prison."
“Doesn’t the Bible say that murderers can’t go to heaven?”
That’s a question I was asked almost every week during my visits to the Cook County Jail in Chicago.
The inmate who started my weekly jail visits was a young deaf college student who, in a moment of rage, killed another deaf person at his school.
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.
A significant number of cities in the United States reported an increase in homicide rates in 2015—a disturbing trend that some have claimed marks the end of a period that saw historic reductions in violent crimes in places like New York City and Chicago.
Daniel Geiter spent much of his young adult years in and out of correctional facilities in and around Chicago. Between his adolescent years and the age of 25, Geiter estimates that he was incarcerated in excess of 20 times.
It was during one of these prison stays that Geiter concluded that things needed to change.
For some students at DePaul University, going to class involves more than just walking into into a lecture hall with a cup of coffee in one hand and a laptop in the other. There are background checks to be made, interviews to be conducted, and copious amounts of paperwork that must be completed before these students are able to even enter the classroom.
On Oct. 23, Prison Fellowship and other organizations from all over the globe gathered in New York City for the fifth annual Movement Day. This event brings together leadership teams from the world's largest cities to build partnerships that help them better reach their respective cities with the grace-filled Gospel of Christ.
Chicago lawmakers have decided it's time to take a fresh approach to counteracting all the gun violence and overflowing jails in their city. And this fresh approach starts with the young people.
On a broadcast of PBS’ Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, PFM Senior Vice President Pat Nolan offers his thoughts on the incarceration of mentally ill inmates, and the Christian obligation to reach out in love to those in need behind bars.
“You know, Jesus said, ‘I was naked, and you clothed me.