The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people in 1,833state prisons, 110federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,134 local jails, 218immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories. But people go to jail 10.6 million times each year. ¹
You all know I am not one who is a lenient forgive and forget kind of person when it comes to criminal justice. Yet our current system seems to be geared towards a never-ending cycle of recidivism. There are expectations, mainly through the work of faith-based groups like Prison fellowship. Here is one story.
INSPIRING HOPE THROUGH TRANSFORMATION
Kathy Vosburg’s first time inside a prison was at a Prison Fellowship Academy® graduation in October 2006. While visiting the original Academy at the Carol S. Vance Unit, one man told her, “We have never, ever known in our entire lives the unconditional love like these mentors and these volunteers show us while we’re here at the Vance Unit.”
That memory stuck.
Today, Vosburg is the founder of CrossWalk Center in Houston, Texas. A local, faith-based parachurch organization founded in 2016, Crosswalk offers safe, sober transitional housing, reentry and spiritual counseling, and living-wage employment placement services.
In late 2019, Prison Fellowship began a formal partnership with CrossWalk Center
