How has Prison Fellowship addressed this rising prison population?
It has certainly been a growing mission field. Prison Fellowship’s response, both in the United States and around the world, has been to seek to mobilize the church to believe what Jesus said in Matthew 25, that if you visit a prisoner, you visit him. We help the church understand our responsibilities as congregations and as individuals to be involved in making disciples behind bars and [helping] those disciples [as they] come out of prison. We welcome them back into society, particularly those who have been changed by Christ and need a church home, a Bible study group, a mentor. One program you run to prepare prisoners for release is the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, which recently lost a court battle. What does that program do and what court challenges are you facing? Prison Fellowship launched the InnerChange Freedom Initiative ten years ago in Texas to try to deal with the problem of recidivism. The concept was based loosely on a program in Brazil in which the authorities pretty
