Yet paleo evangelicals (of whom I have written here often<\/a>) and other Christians pause at Matthew 25:36, when King Jesus commends his followers\u2019 faithfulness, saying \u201cI was in prison and you came to visit me.\u201d We are commanded to identify with the \u201cleast of these,\u201d from unborn children to the elderly to the incarcerated.<\/p>\n Few would quibble with the notion that we need a firm, consistent punitive system to deal with lawbreakers. The American prison system, however, displays horrifying signs of corruption, neglect, and ineffectiveness. Doing something about prison problems has forged unusual bipartisan alliances in recent days, especially that between Senators Rand Paul (R) and Pat Leahy (D), who have proposed the Justice Safety Valve Act<\/a>, which would \u201callow federal courts in certain situations to impose a sentence below a statutory minimum.\u201d Paul notes that America imprisons a higher percentage of its population than any other country, and that since enacting mandatory minimum sentencing practices, the population of U.S. prisons has quadrupled to 2.4 million.<\/p>\n If the prison population represented a city, it would be the fourth largest in the country, just behind Chicago and ahead of Houston. Nonviolent drug offenses in particular have sent huge numbers of black and Hispanic men into the prison system, where they often face pressure and demands from gangs, as well as predatory sexual behavior. The crisis of prison rape, again, receives little attention from politicians or the media, but certain evangelicals, such as the Southern Baptist Convention\u2019s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, have kept the issue in front of their supporters. The ERLC\u2019s Joe Carter recently called for \u201cEnding the Epidemic of Prison Rape<\/a>,\u201d citing a Department of Justice 2007 study that showed that\u00a0\u201c60,000 inmates claimed to have been sexually victimized by prison guards or other inmates during the previous 12 months.\u201d Many of these prisoners, even if incarcerated for short periods on non-violent drug offenses, will leave with sexually-transmitted diseases. Experts estimate that more than a quarter of female prisoners are sexually abused, too.<\/p>\n Evangelicals are often on the front line of ministering to prisoners, and new programs such as Southwestern Baptist Seminary\u2019s Darrington Project<\/a> offer prisoners the opportunity to receive theological education in jail. My Baylor colleague Byron Johnson has done more than anyone to assess these programs\u2019 effects<\/a>\u00a0on recidivism, noting that they go beyond a simple \u201cjailhouse conversion\u201d and often help convicts to begin the arduous process of putting their lives on a different path. \u201cI do believe that \u2018finding God\u2019 or becoming a born-again Christian can play a critically important role as a starting point in the process of long-term change and reform,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cBut these conversions, in isolation, are insufficient in reforming offenders and bringing about lasting change. I would argue that the key to authentic behavioral change lies in an ongoing process of spiritual transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/7\/73\/Cela.jpg\/399px-Cela.jpg\")
<\/p>\n