Each visit one receives while incarcerated corresponds to that person being 80% less likely to go back to prison. Yet, less than 15% of federal inmates receive one visitor. The Alderson Hospitality House provides love and support for people visiting loved ones who are incarcerated in the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson.

Sunlight filled the room. It was bright and cheerful, much like Mary herself. Dressed in fashionable business attire, most would find it difficult to believe that Mary was once homeless and addicted to hard street drugs.

Dougie Abner, a peer recovery coach for Project Rebound, spent 23 years of his life in prison. With six months left of his more than two decades in prison, he started a weekly publication called Rumor Has It while inside the prison.

Is our country truly full of dangerous people who are better locked away?

It was easy at that age to designate who was “good” and who was “bad,” a narrative which I carried into adulthood until I encountered a “criminal” in my life who flipped that understanding on its head: the criminal, Jesus.

Jaclyn Gillispie and Amy Davis, both 43, share a lot of similarities. Together, they realized their potential and began climbing up from the darkest points of their lives hand in hand.

Every morning for 13 months, Lauren Kotz peered down from her prison bunk into her newborn baby’s crib. Twenty-two days into her detention, she gave birth to her daughter.