Unsettling Advent 2025, Day 14
Despite the tough-on-crime adage that prisoners enjoy 'three hots and a cot' during their time behind bars, this paints far too rosy a picture of the meager portions of low-quality and ultra-processed foods available.
Guilty Even When Proven Innocent
In this issue of A Public Witness, we take a closer look at the injustices of Lamar Johnson’s case and what is needed to secure his freedom. We also introduce you to Johnson through an exclusive interview with this brother in Christ as he speaks from
A Vaccine Could Save Prisoners’ Lives. Christians Can Help.
Advocating for prisoner vaccinations is a political issue, but it doesn’t have to be a partisan one. Read full piece
Though US Prison Population Continues Drop, Racial Disparities Remain
During the past decade, the imprisonment rate declined by 15% overall, with the imprisonment rate for blacks dropping by 28%, followed by Hispanics (21%) and whites (13%). Yet racial disparities remain noticeable.
We Need Just Mercy
Why should a person be punished because our lawmakers were slow to recognize their error? If a sentence is wrong, then it is wrong. We shouldn’t measure truth or justice by a calendar.
The Prison Inside Prison
Texas has banished hundreds of prisoners to more than a decade of solitary confinement, an extreme form of a controversial punishment likened to torture. Many of these prisoners aren’t sure how—or, in some cases, if—they will ever get out.
U.S. Prison Population Drop Continues; Racial Disparities Remain
While the U.S. prisons population declined in 2017, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report published in late April, the imprisonment rate for black adult males was still six times the rate of white adult males.
Who Built Your Pew?
Searching for church furniture, Iowa pastor Steve Klawonn discovered a warehouse that is not a normal for-profit American business. Rather, it is one of nine industrial sites owned by Iowa Prison Industries (IPI), a state-managed enterprise of Iowa’s Department of Corrections.
Governor Convicted of Blasphemy Freed from Indonesian Prison
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A polarizing Christian politician whose campaign comments ignited the largest protests in years in Muslim-majority Indonesia was freed Thursday after serving nearly two years in prison for blasphemy.
Cyntoia Brown: Christian University’s Prison Program ‘Changed My Life’
(RNS) — This week, the most high-profile graduate of the LIFE program at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn. — offered behind the locked steel doors and razor-wire perimeter of the Tennessee Prison for Women — made national headlines when Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam granted her