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EDITORIAL: Reform efforts seek to reach all of God's children

Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal - 6/9/2018

June 09--Last week, the First Step Act passed by a substantial margin in the House of Representatives with bipartisan support from lawmakers and evangelicals.

The bill's purpose is to reduce recidivism among prisoners. It would encourage and make it easier for prisoners to join faith-based classes and job-training programs while incarcerated. Such courses are proven to reduce the likelihood that an inmate would end up back in prison after their release. For taking these classes, prisoners would receive credits that allow them to be released early to halfway houses or home confinement.

The bill is the product of a White House conversation over a year ago with Jared Kushner, Mike Pence, Ivanka Trump and several prominent evangelicals. Millions of Americans are impacted by incarceration. Even Jared Kushner's father went to jail for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. Since its beginnings, part of the church's mission is to minister to prisoners.

American evangelicals have held an interest in prison reform since the 70s, after Nixon's former aid, Charles Colson, found faith while serving prison time in Alabama for Watergate-related crimes. Colson played a big part in developing Nixon's tough-on-crime stance, but after three years in prison, Colson rebuked that philosophy. He said it wasn't Christian, and it would ultimately fail. In 1976, Colson founded his Prison Fellowship ministry to help the incarcerated.

The First Step Act hasn't passed the Senate yet. Senate democrats and others complain the bill doesn't address aspects of the justice system that land people in prison to begin with -- like mandatory sentencing. Lawmakers behind the First Step Act say they plan on addressing those problems as well. The First Step Act is just, well, the first step. Either way, this effort is highly commendable. It's nice to see Evangelicals using their unprecedented access to the White House to make some change.

Our culture at large is rethinking mass incarceration, and how incarceration and recidivism align with poverty and race. Massively popular shows like Netflix's "Making a Murderer" and NPR's "Serial" podcast, position the protocols of the justice system for critique. You can read for yourself about the school-to-prison pipeline, about how much easier it is for a poor person or a person of color to fall through the cracks of the justice system.

Jesus calls us to reach for folks down in the cracks, who society deems expendable but is a child of God as much as anyone.

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(c)2018 the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (Tupelo, Miss.)

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