PRISON FELLOWSHIP: Justice Reform

In the highly partisan environment of Washington, DC, there is precious little on which policy makers and influencers on both sides of the political divide can agree.  The subject of criminal justice reform, however, appears to be one of the few where Republicans and Democrats are willing to work together to enact meaningful change.

Hank Green, half of the of the popular “Vlogbrothers” video blog team, was recently asked by a viewer, “If you could do a high-quality animated video about any issue in the world, what would you choose?”  Green’s response?  “I went with incarceration in America, because it is messed up.”

“[The] vast prison-industrial complex has succeeded in reducing crime but is a blunt instrument,” National Review columnist Rich Lowry writes in a recent online article. “Prison stays often constitute a graduate seminar in crime, and at the very least, the system does a poor job preparing prisoners to return to the real world.”

We are pleased to announce that the U.S. House Appropriations Committee honored Chuck Colson with a task force on federal corrections. The Committee has set aside funds in the FY2014 spending bill to establish the Charles Colson Task Force on Federal Corrections to make recommendations to increase public safety, improve offender accountability, reduce recidivism, address victims’ services, and control costs.

The following post originally appeared on the Justice Fellowship website.  To learn more about Justice Fellowship and its efforts to reform the criminal justice system, visit www.justicefellowship.org.

If movie stars and rappers can put together a loud call for just laws and smart sentencing practices, why can’t Christians get more mobilized?

One January weekend I spent two very full days with my daughter and her husband, renovating one of the bathrooms in their house in Michigan. They wanted to do a real overhaul of this particular room, with new plumbing, electrical wiring, and drywall work.

The following commentary originally appeared on the BreakPoint website.

For many Americans, a single feeling shapes the way we see criminal justice: fear. When we think about our businesses, our communities and our loved ones, and the threat which crime poses to them, we react out of fear toward the perpetrators.