“Why is it that the same vans that come to the prison on Wednesday and Sunday nights to take us to Bible study seem hesitant to pick us up from our homes now that we are released?” said Dennis Gaddy, founder and executive of Community Success Initiative, a Raleigh-based organization that serves the recently released. Gaddy himself was formerly incarcerated.
The United States has more than 300,000 churches, meant to welcome, build, and sustain relationships—and there aren’t many groups that need that kind of relational support more than people who are released from jail. For every Miea Walker who emerges to an intact marriage, committed mentors, and a welcoming church community, far more former prisoners find themselves adrift, suffering the last and in some ways cruelest stage of the uniquely American drama of incarceration.
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