PRISON FELLOWSHIP: Prison Fellowship Academy

It wasn't until I was 15 years into my 30-year-plus life sentence before I gave my life to Christ.

Hope still bears the scars of her birth parents' war with addiction. Heroin and alcoholism left her childhood marked with abandonment, isolation, and worthlessness. Even after she was adopted, Hope struggled with thoughts of suicide.

I have been incarcerated for four years. I have learned that God doesn't see me as a [number], but He sees me as Emily. I am a child of the one true King, highly favored and dearly loved!

Earlier this week, Insider took you behind the walls on Rikers Island to December's Prison Fellowship Academy™y graduation.

Rikers Island is the main jail complex for New York City. On average the daily population is 10,000, making Rikers one of the world's largest correctional institutions.

"I was certified as an adult when I was 17 years old and have been locked up for the last 15 years," Robert writes from the Minnesota Correctional Facility at Lino Lakes.

From his wife’s hand, John drew his first snort of meth. One encounter with the choice fruit plunged him into a twisted romance with addiction.