Slate.com has an interview with Chuck Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but this excerpt about what prompted Colson’s “prison conversion” is especially interesting:
“When I was in prison, I saw the absolute futility of the prison system. There’s no way you can take a bunch of criminals, stick ’em in a dormitory where they sit around at night comparing the crimes they committed and how they’re going to do it next time, and expect to rehabilitate them. It’s demeaning, it’s demoralizing, it doesn’t give people aspirations to do the right thing. It almost encourages the wrong thing. So I got out of prison and I realized: This isn’t working.”