BOB FAW, correspondent: Question: What do this longtime alcoholic, this up and coming project manager, this receptionist who was homeless, and Noah Haynes, who just turned one, have in common? Answer: The chance at a better life because of this former corporate high-flyer and mother of four.

NANCY MURRAY (Builders of Hope): We’re building houses. We’re rescuing houses that are slated for demolition, rebuilding them and making them available and affordable to families who otherwise would be living in pretty substandard conditions.

FAW: For the past five years, her program, Builders of Hope, has found houses about to be demolished and put in a landfill.

MURRAY: So far, to date Builders of Hope has rescued eleven million pounds of debris from the landfill. The only inventory that we work with is inventory slated for demolition. I’d say 99 percent of the homes that are donated that are older have hardwood floors in them. We’re able to restore those. The roofs, the rafter systems, the floor systems—all in really great shape and very usable.

FAW: Nancy Murray’s nonprofit group rescues houses from commercial, road and hospital expansion as well as private donors who want to build larger homes. The houses are rebuilt and refurbished into energy-efficient green houses, as Josh Thompson learned when he moved into his Builders of Hope home.

JOSH THOMPSON: All the paints that they use are all low-chemical and designed to kind of produce a healthy environment.

FAW: Now that’s what we see. What we don’t see—tell me about the insulation.

THOMPSON: Yeah. What you don’t see is spray-on foam insulation across the whole house—amazing energy efficiency with that. You got all these windows are the double-paned.

FAW: In Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, and other North Carolina cities, Nancy Murray’s Builders of Hope, with help from private and government funds, has restored nearly 100 houses, selling them at an average cost of $135,000. Putting them on land she has bought or that has been donated, Murray sells them at cost to low- and moderate-income wage-earners she calls the working poor.

MURRAY: You say affordable housing and everybody thinks, “Oh, those people.” Well, those people are your teachers, your firefighters, your police officers, your nurse. It’s 70 percent of the working population of any major city, and those are the people who need affordable housing.

FAW: People like Noah’s parents, Dana and Robbie Haynes.

ROBBIE HAYNES: There’s houses like this in the downtown area, but it’s just not with our price range. We couldn’t afford to have those upgrades and different things.

FAW: New home owners like receptionist Nikki McKinnon who also could not afford to buy much of anything on her $25,000 a year salary.

NIKKI MCKINNON: Just having your own—it’s nothing like it. It gives you just a sense of pride and worth. It’s just wonderful just to say that I actually own a piece of land in this world, you know. It’s nice.

FAW: Nancy Murray gave up her job as a marketing and advertising executive to start Builders of Hope with money she inherited from her father and with the knowledge of one of his businesses—construction.

MURRAY: We were building million-dollar vacation town homes, and we were displacing people when we bought property that were renting. We would tear them down and build something else, and I thought, wow, what we’re doing is wrong. You know, I started getting a conscience, like this is terrible.

FAW: So she traded in her stilettos for steel-tipped boots, even bought her own earth-mover. It is, she says, a kind of ministry.

MURRAY: There’s a verse in Matthew that states that you shouldn’t store your money up, you know, where moths and rust and decay set in, but to take that money and invest it in Kingdom work and to really be able to use it to make a difference in loving others and caring for others while we’re here on earth.

FAW: With a staff of 60, her Builders of Hope scours a 60-mile radius looking for houses, some donated by homeowners like attorney Bryan Brice, who get a handsome tax write-off and satisfaction.

BRYAN BRICE: This is reuse and recycle and and hope in a way that is affording home ownership to lower- and middle-income families, and if you look at this whole neighborhood it’s just amazing what they’re doing here to rebuild this area. We’re glad to be a part of it.

FAW: But there is more here being rebuilt than houses. Once, this neighborhood was crime-infested.

MURRAY: Gang members were giving some problems to some of our first homeowners here, actually. This was gang territory.

FAW: Now the area is virtually crime-free.

MURRAY: That demonstrates that revitalization really does work.

FAW: Her Builders of Hope also refurbishes and rebuilds rental units. That restoration and the rebuilding of the houses is performed in part through a mentoring and training program established by Murray. Her organization hires hard-to-employ men who’ve had prison records or substance abuse problems, like the long-term alcoholic Kennie Byrum.

KENNIE BYNUM: I could see that they cared about not only just me, not focusing on let’s stop what we’re doing and care about Kennie, but let’s bring Kennie along and show him that he can be part of something that deals with caring about others. It’s a fellowship that I’ve never witnessed before or been part of before.

FAW: So lives are also being transformed here as well as houses. Phillip Brickle, once a longtime drug addict who became a pastor, now owns one of Nancy Murray’s houses.

PHILLIP BRICKLE: It’s a place of peace. It’s a place of joy.

FAW: What’s it do to someone like that? Do they change because they now can live in a home like this?

BRICKLE: I believe it gives an individual self-worth. You know, it also gives an individual a feeling of ownership, and any time you have a feeling of ownership it gives responsibility. So I do think it does bring about responsibility, and whenever you have more responsibility, it brings about change.

FAW: Juggling house moving schedules with city zoning permits, among other issues, is a true test of Nancy’s faith.

NANCY MURRAY: I would get mad at God, you know. It was like, okay, you brought me here, you convinced me to do this, you know, this project is about to fall apart. Everything is going to go by the wayside.

FAW: Finally, she says she put her fate in God’s hands to guide her to make the right decisions. It was then, she says, Builders of Hope took off.

MURRAY: You’re saying, okay, we’re here for a reason. Why are we here? What do I need to learn? What people are going to interface with me because we’re in the midst of this problem that maybe because I’ve met them something else is going to happen? So you trust that everything happens for a reason, and it’s all connected, and ultimately gets you to the place where God wants you to be.

FAW: In addition to the projects in North Carolina, Nancy’s Builders of Hope moved, refurbished, and relocated 76 homes in New Orleans that were about to be demolished to make room for a new hospital. It’s estimated about 250,000 houses a year in the United States get torn down. Cities like Detroit and Dallas have contacted Nancy about her work.

MURRAY: This is a model that can replicate, and then it does have very important ramifications, I think, nationally in terms of being able to rebuild neighborhoods and to get people back in housing, but we do need funding. We need supporters.

FAW: With the constant fundraising it is a struggle, but the satisfaction, she says, is worth all the uncertainty and aggravation.

MURRAY: You move them in over there, and the eyes and the excitement and the warmth and the pride—it’s just so sweet to see that when you do give them an opportunity and you give them a chance and something beautiful that they deserve, they take care of it and they blossom and they grow, and they really create a new community for themselves.

FAW: Here, where because of one woman’s faith a house is not just a home, it’s a new beginning.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Bob Faw in Raleigh, North Carolina.

SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: Los Angeles County’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility: it’s one of the largest jails in the country. Behind its walls, over 3,000 men are locked up as their criminal prosecutions continue. Many prisoners are accused of committing murder, rape, and a variety of gang-related crimes. However, this jailhouse is also a house of worship to Dennis Gibbs, a senior chaplain at Twin Towers. His Sunday services are like few others, held in a cell block and closely watched by sheriff’s deputies.

CHAPLAIN DENNIS GIBBS: I think this is a holy place. I believe that we are standing on holy ground. This is a place of reconciliation and healing, and so I really see this as—in many ways this is my parish.

GONZALEZ: Chaplin Gibbs is one of dozens of clergy men and women from a variety of faiths who offer pastoral care and spiritual guidance to the inmates at Twin Towers. Although an Episcopalian, Chaplain Gibbs provides spiritual counseling to all prisoners who approach him, no matter what their particular faith.

GIBBS (speaking to prisoner): Hey, man, how is it going? Good to see you again.

PRISONER: Could you say a little prayer for me and my girl, my baby?

GONZALEZ: Although the chaplain doesn’t condone what these men are accused of doing, he also doesn’t apologize for showing them compassion.

GIBBS (praying with prisoner): God the Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you forever.

GIBBS: These men are wounded, these men are orphans, and these men are largely forgotten, and I think it’s powerful that we bring church to them and remind them that they are a part of our community, and that they are beloved by God.

CARLOS ORTIZ: You build a bond, I’d say, with the chaplain. You build a bond of friendship.

GONZALEZ: Carlos Ortiz, who’s been at Twin Towers for six months, was recently convicted of drug possession. He says Chaplin Gibbs and other jailhouse clergy help inmates sustain and develop their faith when they need it the most.

ORTIZ: If you don’t have faith, they provide faith. You know, I am a man of faith, so just the fact there is someone that you can talk to, someone that can acknowledge about God, that’s something good for inmates. The situation you are at might not be good, but he makes you realize that you are good spiritually and physically, you are in a good spot.

GONZALEZ: Along with larger worship services, the chaplains spend much of their time holding private one-on-one sessions with prisoners who want to talk to them. Episcopal chaplain Greta Ronnigen says she’s not interested in why the men she ministers to are here.

GONZALEZ: You don’t care what the guys are in here for?

CHAPLAIN GRETA RONNIGEN: No.

GONZALEZ: Why? That seems counter-intuitive.

RONNIGEN: Because I am here for their spiritual support. I am not a lawyer. I am not social services. I’m about where they are with God. I am here to talk to them as they turn, turn away from the dark that has been their past, and they are looking, they are seeking.

GONZALEZ: Some of the prisoners at the center of complex cases, such as murder or gang-related crimes, can be held at Twin Towers for years before they’re convicted and sentenced to state prison. Except in extraordinary circumstances, say when an inmate might be threatening to murder someone, the jailhouse clergy keep confidential what they hear from prisoners, as Chaplain Gibbs explained in a conversation back at the Los Angeles Episcopal diocese.

GONZALEZ: If an inmate says something in a confession and admits to something horrible you don’t have to report it, right?

GIBBS: It’s protected.

GONZALEZ: It’s protected.

GIBBS: Yeah, it’s protected. The nature of confession is that it is a sealed sacrament, and that’s important for the men. Once the priest puts on that stole and enters into the sacrament of the church, it is a completely sealed and confidential conversation, just like it would be with somebody confessing in their church.

GONZALEZ: The presence of the chaplains at county lockups also helps ease tensions and assuage anger, and the sheriff’s deputies welcome that. However, at Twin Towers security and punishment always come before worship, and that’s especially true in the jail’s highest security units or pods.

GIBBS: In this particular unit they are complicated cases. I would say a very good majority of the men are in here for homicide, and there’s a lot of gang-related crimes in this pod.

GONZALEZ: Here, services are often conducted through steel doors and plexiglass, and services, as in the day we were shooting, are often cut short by lockdowns.

GIBBS (speaking to Chaplain Ronnigen): Greta, full lockdown. We gotta go.

RONNIGEN: Sorry, guys. Peace.

GIBBS: Yeah, the jail just went on full lockdown, so we never really know what that is about, just that a full lockdown means that there is no movement whatsoever, so we want to wrap up rather quickly. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get out of the jail.

GONZALEZ: Although he doesn’t get into the details, Chaplain Gibbs knew about confinement long before he arrived at Twin Towers six years ago.

(speaking to Chaplain Gibbs): You were in jail yourself?

GIBBS: I was, yeah. I have lived this despairing life to a great degree, absolutely. My personal response to the call to follow Christ has led me back to the streets where I once was homeless. It’s led me back to the drug-addicted and alcoholic, as I once suffered. It’s led me back to the jails, where I once was a prisoner.

GONZALEZ: I’m sure, Chaplain, when the men at Twin Towers hear about your past, and I’m sure you share some of your past with them, it gives you a particular credibility.

GIBBS: I think it does. I think it changes the conversation to a degree and kind of alerts people that I am not just some do-gooder Christian guy coming in to tell you that Jesus loves you.

GONZALEZ: That’s certainly the case for prisoner David Yi.

DAVID YI: He does give us hope. That he was once an inmate also and now this is where he’s at, helping other people find themselves—it’s just a lot of hope.

GONZALEZ: He’s a good model to follow?

YI: Exactly. Someone you can lean on.

GONZALEZ: One of the Twin Towers prisoners Chaplain Gibbs has gotten to know the best in recent months is also the most unusual. He’s William Manson, a scholarly 80-year-old physician recently convicted of killing his ex-wife. Already in the hospital ward, Manson knows he’ll likely die behind prison walls.

WILLIAM MANSON: I think that the sentence was just under the circumstances. I did the crime. Now I’m paying the price.

GONZALEZ: And spiritually are you armed for this, for this life that you have ahead of you, being a man of faith?

MANSON: I don’t know. I think so.

GIBBS (speaking to William Manson): God bless you.

MANSON: Thank you very much.

GIBBS: Would you like to pray?

MANSON: Yes.

GIBBS: As chaplains we absorb people’s sadness, their brokenness, their wounding, their depth of spiritual despair, and we are very aware of that as chaplains. I think in many ways we hold for these inmates often what they cannot hold for themselves.

(anointing and blessing prisoners): May your wounds be healed.

GONZALEZ: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.

Originally broadcast January 30, 2009

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: This past week (November 9) the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether it’s constitutional to sentence juveniles who commit crimes other than murder to life in prison without parole. Tim O’Brien reports.

TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: Twenty-three-year-old Kenneth Young had just turned 15 when he committed a string of hotel robberies in the Tampa area, acting at the direction of 25-year-old Jacques Bethea, a neighborhood drug dealer with a long arrest record.  Bethea would hold the gun. Young would take the money.

KENNETH YOUNG: The only thing he told me to do was get the money and the tapes, and that was it.

O’BRIEN:  What tapes?

YOUNG:  Like video tapes from the video cameras.

O’BRIEN: The security camera?

YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN:  And you did that?

YOUNG:  Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young says he had little choice. His mother was addicted to crack cocaine and had stolen drugs from Bethea. He believed her life was in danger.

YOUNG: He threatened to hurt my Momma.

O’BRIEN: What did he say he’d do?

YOUNG: Kill her.

O’BRIEN: If you didn’t go along.

YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young’s mother blames herself for her son’s problems.

STEPHANIE YOUNG:  Yes, I do, I do, because if it wasn’t for the drugs, I mean …

O’BRIEN: But that didn’t keep Kenneth from being sentenced to life in prison with no parole.

JUDGE J. ROGERS PADGETT: What we see is what we get in the way of a defendant. We get a person who shows no remorse. We get a person who is smiling in court, thinks it’s funny. We have a person who, while he is under consideration for a life sentence, is flipping signals to people in the gallery.

Judge J. Rogers Padgett

O’BRIEN: He’s only 15, barely.

PADGETT: We have a person who gives no appearance of deserving any slack whatsoever and sentence him, so we give him a life sentence.

O’BRIEN: Florida, like many states, allows prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults for serious crimes, and the state legislature did away with all parole in 1995. As a result, there are now 77 inmates in the state serving life without parole for non-homicides committed when they were under 18, more than in all other states combined. Paolo Annino runs the Children in Prison Project at Florida State University:

PAOLO ANNINO: This is no different from slavery or other major moral issues. Placing children in adult prisons for life is a death sentence for children. Do we want to do that as a society? Do we want to ignore our Western traditions?

O’BRIEN: This week (November 9) the U.S. Supreme Court took up that question in two separate cases involving Terrence Graham, who at age 17 committed armed burglaries while on parole for a previous armed robbery, and Joe Sullivan, who was convicted of raping and robbing a 72-year-old woman when he was only 13.

BRYAN STEVENSON: We don’t think there’s any dispute that sentencing a 13-year-old to life in prison without parole is unusual. It’s happened only twice for non-homicides. We also think that to say to any child of 13 that you’re only fit to die in prison is cruel.

O’BRIEN: But Stevenson ran into some skeptical justices, including Antonin Scalia: “I don’t see why it is any crueler to an adolescent that it is to an adult… Where do you draw the line?” Justice Sam Alito: “What about …brutal rapes, assaults that render the victim paraplegic but not dead …the person shows no remorse… the worst case you could possibly imagine? That person must at some point be made eligible for parole? “You are correct, your honor,” answered Brian Gowdy, the attorney for Terrence Graham.

Brian Gowdy

BRIAN GOWDY: If the court rules in Terrence’s favor, about one hundred persons who committed crimes as adolescents will benefit by getting a chance to show some day that they have changed, and that’s all we’re asking for. Not for immediate release, but a chance to show that the kid has changed.

O’BRIEN: In court, Gowdy pointed to a landmark Supreme Court ruling four years ago in which the justices rejected the death penalty for juvenile offenders, relying heavily on evidence showing that juveniles use a different part of the brain in the decision-making process, making them more likely to act irrationally, less likely to appreciate the consequences of what they do. Several justices observed that that was a death penalty case, and death is different.

GOWDY: Death is different, but not in any critical respects when you’re talking about an adolescent. Both sentences condemn the adolescent to die in prison, both give up on the kid, both determine that the adolescent can’t be changed,  and both say that, based on an adolescent mistake, you can never live in civil society.

O’BRIEN: The attorney for Florida said the state’s sentencing practices were aimed at addressing a serious crime problem and that such policy decisions should not be second-guessed by federal judges.

SCOTT MAKAR (Florida Solicitor General): That’s a quintessential states’ judgment, and 21 states have said no to parole and our position is that the court shouldn’t impose something on the states that the states themselves have rejected.

O’BRIEN: Chief Justice John Roberts proposed a compromise requiring judges and juries to consider a defendant’s youth, but allowing life without parole in extreme cases. Defense lawyers dismissed the idea as too little.

STEVENSON: Because poor kids and minority kids and disadvantaged kids are always the ones who end up with these harsh sentence.

O’BRIEN: Conservatives on the court dismissed it as too much. Meanwhile, back in Florida, Kenneth Young and more than a hundred other prison inmates nationwide serving life without parole for crimes they committed as children got some support from what might seem to be an unlikely source. The judge who sentenced Young, J. Rogers Padgett, has come out against laws that deny parole to juveniles in non-homicide cases.

PADGETT: If I went and talked to Kenneth, I might have sympathy, too, because I firmly believe the Department of Corrections ought to be given the latitude to determine when these people are ready to go. What do I know? At the time of sentencing I’m doing a snapshot, so what do I know?

O’BRIEN: The justices appeared sharply divided, making any decision unlikely before the end of the term next June. For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien in Washington.

ABERNETHY: Among those who have filed briefs with the court are 20 religious groups that argued that the values of mercy, forgiveness, and compassion are central to their faiths. They said judges have a responsibility to consider those values, along with the possibility of rehabilitation, especially for juveniles. They urged what they call “restorative justice.”

MARY ALICE WILLIAMS, guest anchor: In inner cities across the US high numbers of African-American men are caught up in the criminal justice system. It’s costly to keep them in prison. It’s also costly to the communities they leave behind — and return to. Phil Jones reports.

PHIL JONES: Welcome to Brownsville — a pocket of poverty inside Brooklyn, New York, a place where crime and prison often are a way of life.

RONALD HERRON: Both my parents were drug addicts. My father wasn’t at home.

Ronald Herron

DEJUAN SMITH: I went to prison for murder in the second degree.

NATHANEL RICE: The first time for robbery — two years; second time for robbery —12 years; third time for drug possession.

VINCE MATTOS (Community Activist): I was out hustling narcotics. What I would have to tell Mom is, “Look, I found a whole bunch of money!” I would see Mom crying because she was behind on bills or something like that. I would come in and say, “Mom, look I found x, y and z.” You know, she was like, oh, you know, “God is good” — this and that.

JONES: But Vincent Mattos’s mother is proud of her 42-year-old son.

Mr. MATTOS (speaking to men): Hey brothers. How you doing?

JONES: He now roams these troubled streets as a community activist. He knows the turf.

Mr. MATTOS: Young men that’s out on the corner from sun-up to sundown, falling back to do what they know to do to earn a living because there’s no jobs for them. There’s no helpful reentry program that’s in place right now. Whatever you want, you can get it on this strip. Drugs, sex, and guns, that’s what’s major out here.

JONES: What else is major — the pervasive presence of police with the task of arresting the bad guys and putting them behind bars. There is no doubt that police activity decreases crime. But is there a tipping point, when legitimate law enforcement, designed to protect the public, may have unintended consequences: promotion poverty, even more crime?

ERIC CADORA (Director, Justice Mapping Center): The current overuse and overdependence on criminal justice is a complete failure. It’s having no impact on these issues of public safety and crime. That’s not to say there isn’t a need for a level of criminal justice. But this radical overuse is not accomplishing those goals.

Eric Cadora

JONES: In the 1970s, there were about 200,000 inmates in US prisons. Today there are about two million. For years law enforcement used crime mapping to target places where the crimes were being committed. Eric Cadora, director of an organization called the Justice Mapping Center, is an advocate for sentencing reform and prison alternatives. He proposed another use for mapping.

Mr. CADORA: I said, “Well, what if we don’t do crime mapping? What if, instead, we mapped where people lived who are going into jail and prison every year?” When we started doing maps of where people lived, we found hugely concentrated neighborhoods where vast majorities of people were going to prison and jail and coming back, and other neighborhoods where nearly none were.

This is New York City. The brightest red show the highest rate per thousand adults, male adults, admitted to prison for a single year. Let’s say there are about 100,000 people living in Brownsville — about half of them are male, that’s about 50,000. About — between 10 and 13 percent are going to prison and jail every year.

JONES: This increased prison population has come at a staggering cost to taxpayers.

Mr. CADORA: We can now calculate, block by block, how much we’re spending to remove and return people en masse from and back to that block.

JONES: This cluster of housing projects is what Caldora calls a “Million Dollar Block.”

Mr. CADORA: We found about 150 individual blocks in New York City for which we were spending more than $1 million a year to remove and return people to prison and jail.

Vince Mattos

JONES: Cadora uses dark red to show the concentrations in other states. They are maps that call for new directions.

Mr. CADORA: What these maps have done is accumulate the effect over the course of a year of a criminal justice and imprisonment system. What’s heated up here is a mass migration with the costs of having to move back and forth from this neighborhood to prisons upstate and back. So what we’re seeing here is constant grappling with resettlement, with disruption, cost of split families, tough health care.

JONES: Greg Jackson, another civic activist and a life-long resident of Brownsville, doesn’t need a map. He’s seen his own community imprisoned.

GREG JACKSON (Community Activist): Incarceration is not just the individual going to jail, but it’s the whole family going to jail, for Brownsville. Everybody’s suffering from it.

JONES: How’s that?

Mr. JACKSON: Because when this individual comes out of jail he still can’t find employment. And that person, the kids he left behind, the parents he left behind, the wife he left behind, they all suffer in the interim. So, when he comes out you think, “Wow, it’s a good time, my father’s coming out of jail, my mother’s coming out of jail.” There’s nothing good about it.

JONES: For one thing, felons aren’t allowed to live in these public housing projects, although some do. Others end up homeless, and most are jobless. Ask Dejaun Smith, still struggling eight years after his release.

Mr. SMITH: I’ve done odd jobs like — I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many. I went to an interview several months ago, and once they learned about my conviction they looked at me like, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

JONES: After decades of hard-line policies on crime — tough justice — more and more communities are looking into what is called Justice Reinvestment.

Mr. CADORA: Let us take the investments that had been built up over the years from criminal justice, redirect them to investments in civil institutions in those neighborhoods — better schools, better health care, better mental health support, and so on. In many of the states where the Justice Reinvestment initiative has taken root, prison populations are either dropping or the trend line in growth has been radically reduced, and that’s from Connecticut to Kansas — liberal to conservative.

Matoka Belton

JONES: Most of the crimes are connected to violence, drugs, and alcohol. But researchers found another culprit for the increased prison populations.

Mr. CALDORA: We found states where 60 to 65 percent of everyone entering prison each year were entering as a result of a revocation of parole and probation.

JONES: That was the case in Kansas, so legislators passed a new law — a new direction —committing taxpayer dollars to cities and communities that change parole and probation regulations that’ll reduce the prison population by 20 percent.

Mr. CALDORA: That’s kind of what the reinvestment project is about. It’s about saying, “Look, if you can reduce it, we’ll give you the money to keep reducing it.”

JONES: According to Caldora, states are being forced to rethink their hard line throw-the-criminals-in-jail attitude because, especially in these hard economic times, the criminal justice system is too costly, both financially and psychologically.

Mr. CALDORA: They realize that this overwhelming overuse of criminal justice is one of the greatest threats to sort of civil society.

JONES: This threat to society, this impact on communities in prison, can be felt on the streets and inside the crowded housing projects. We met Matoka Belton. She didn’t want us to see her three children. Their father went to prison.

(to Ms. Belton): What was he in prison for?

MATOKA BELTON: A number of things, and it was due to survival.

JONES: What was impact on the children of him being away?

Mr. MATOKA: It’s hard because they’re like, you know, what “school” is this, because you try not to say he’s in prison. “What school is this that they don’t come home? College?” But then it comes to the point where they’re a certain age and you can’t lie anymore. I was once an inmate myself. I know what it was like for my children to feel like, “Wow, my mother’s not here. Why can’t mommy come home with us?” It’s hard to leave a visit.

JONES: It’s a cruel cycle — poverty, crime, prison — passed from one generation to the next. A child whose parent went to prison is likely to end up behind bars too.

Mr. MATTOS: When you look at a kid and you say, “How could that kid, you know, have done such a crime like that?” Because he was never really told that was something wrong to do. He never celebrated Christmas with the family or sat down at the dinner table with the family.

JONES: About 700,000 inmates come back home every year. Most are unprepared for re-entry, and their communities are unprepared for their return. As the US government is making huge investments in industries and businesses, it is now being forced to also address a broken justice system, a system in desperate need of a stimulus package of sorts — justice reinvestment.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Phil Jones in Brooklyn, New York.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a powerful story today about punishment for juveniles who commit crimes. The Supreme Court has thrown out the death penalty for such young people, but in 44 states they can still be sentenced to life in prison without parole.  Is that just for children – even for the worst crimes? Tim O’Brien reports from Tampa, Florida.

TIM O’BRIEN: Twenty-three-year-old Kenneth Young is serving life in prison with no possibility of parole for a series of hotel robberies in and around Tampa, Florida. It was June of 2000. Young had just turned 15 and was acting at the direction of 25-year-old Jacques Bethea, a neighborhood drug dealer with a long arrest record. Bethea would hold the gun. Young would take the money:

KENNETH YOUNG: The only thing he told me to do was get the money and the tapes, and that was it.

O’BRIEN: What tapes?

Mr. YOUNG: Like video tapes from the video cameras.

O’BRIEN: The security cameras?

Mr. YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: And you did that?

Mr. YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young says he had little choice. His mother was addicted to crack cocaine and had stolen drugs from Bethea. He believed her life was in danger.

Mr. YOUNG: He threatened to hurt my Momma.

O’BRIEN: What did he say he’d do?

Mr. YOUNG: Kill her.

Mr. YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young’s mother, who says she’s been off drugs for more than three years, blames herself for the fix her son is in.

O’BRIEN: If you didn’t go along?

STEPHANIE YOUNG: Yes, I do, I do, because if it wasn’t for the drugs, me being on drugs, then my son wouldn’t be where he’s at today.

O’BRIEN: Young is being held at a maximum security prison in central Florida. Under Florida law, juveniles charged with serious crimes are tried as adults, and serious crimes — like armed robbery — can bring life in prison. And in the courtroom of Judge J. Rogers Padgett, being a child didn’t seem to help. It can even hurt the child who behaves like one, as Kenneth Young did.

Judge J. ROGERS PADGETT (Hillsborough County, Florida Circuit Court): So what we see is what we get in the way of a defendant. We get a person who shows no remorse. We get a person who is smiling in court, thinks it’s funny. We have a person who, while he is under consideration for a life sentence, is flipping signals to people in the gallery.

O’BRIEN: He’s only 15, barely.

Judge PADGETT: We have a person who gives no appearance of deserving any slack whatsoever and sentence him. So we give him a life sentence.

O’BRIEN: Enter law professor Paolo Annino, who runs the Children in Prison Project at Florida State University. Annino has been trying for years to get the Florida legislature to allow parole consideration for all juvenile offenders in the state to give them a second chance, his arguments as much moral as they are legal.

(to Prof. Paolo Annino): Is it your position that no juvenile should be sentenced to life without parole?

Professor PAOLO ANNINO (Florida State University): Oh, absolutely, and I think we’re immoral, ultimately, as a nation. This is no different from slavery or other major moral issues. Placing children in adult prisons for life is a death sentence for children. Do we want to do that as a society? Do we want to ignore our Western traditions? I mean, we do have Western traditions, and one part of our Western traditions is called redemption, and for many people in our culture redemption is an important value.

Judge PADGETT: There are some crimes that these people have committed that simply have no redemption. The victim and the public in general who know about the crime are looking for retribution.

O’BRIEN: It’s all about retribution.

Judge PADGETT: Retribution, right.

O’BRIEN: According to Human Rights Watch, the United States is the only country in the world that regularly sentences juvenile offenders to life in prison without parole. There are now more than 2,500. Pennsylvania has the most with 444. All but these six states allow life without parole for those under 18 at the time of their crimes.

Most of the crimes that bring life in prison without parole are far worse than Kenneth Young’s armed robberies. Most involved murder, often the murder of other children — crimes that shock the conscience and break the heart.

DAWN ROMIG (testifying): Good morning. My name is Dawn Romig.

O’BRIEN: In Pennsylvania, a Senate committee held hearings last October to consider doing away with life sentences for juvenile offenders. Lawmakers got an earful from opponents like Dawn Romig, whose 12-year-old daughter had been murdered by 17-year-old Brian Bahr.

Ms. ROMIG (testifying): We learned that Brian had made a list. It was called 23 things to do to a girl in the woods: “Beat her, check; rape her, check; kill her, check.” Everything on that list was carried out. It was an adult act he planned and executed. Why should these juveniles not get life in prison? Age cannot excuse what they have done.

JODI DOTTS (testifying): I never got to say goodbye to Kimmie. I never got to see her in a casket. I now talk to her at her grave still, 10 years later, on Mother’s Day. I’d also like to add, as I was sitting here listening to people saying they need second chances, my daughter didn’t have a second chance. She wasn’t given that choice whether to live or to die and I’m here to fight to make sure that these juveniles do not get released. Thank you.

O’BRIEN: What do you say to the parents of a child — whose child is murdered?

Prof. ANNINO: Well, it’s tragic and it’s very difficult, and I turn to a group that I’m associated with, and it’s called Mothers Against Murderers Association — and their children have been killed

O’BRIEN: MAMA Inc., a remarkable support group in West Palm Beach. Seventy-three women, all of whom have lost a child to murder, meet at this storefront office every other Thursday. The walls are lined with the photographs—the mother with her lost child.

On this day, Paula Bowe will be joining MAMA’s poignant photo gallery. Her daughter was shot to death by an ex-boyfriend—

PAULA BOWE: And he shot her. He shot her twice at point blank—once in the face, once in the neck.

O’BRIEN: What makes this association so remarkable is that, despite their grief, members do not seek retribution. Instead, they speak out against it.

ANGELA WILLIAMS (Founder, MAMA Inc): That’s one thing I tell my moms all the time: the only way they’re going to move on, they’re going to have to learn to forgive, you know, and if they don’t learn to forgive, then they’ll never be able to move on to the next step.

O’BRIEN: And Angela Williams should know.

Ms. WILLIAMS: I lost seven. I lost five nephews and two nieces in my family, and that motivates me to keep going to help others. Gun violence — all killed by guns.

O’BRIEN: MAMA is supporting Kenneth Young’s petition for clemency on the premise that any child should be given a second chance, even for murder.

O’BRIEN: Sylvia Manning is a preacher whose son was shot to death. She believes there’s hope for his killer, who has yet to be apprehended.

Reverend SYLVIA MANNING: I feel as though whoever did this to my son, they can be redeemed. I mean, if they know Jesus they can be redeemed.

O’BRIEN: It’s a religious issue to you?

Rev. MANNING: Not really religious. It’s what my heart says.

O’BRIEN: Linda Battle is a Palm Beach County deputy sheriff whose son Eric was run down and killed by a drug dealer.

LINDA BATTLE (Deputy Sheriff, Palm Beach County, FL): I worked in the jails, and I see the juveniles come in there for major crimes, and they’re just babies, and I don’t know what got them to that point.

O’BRIEN: What got them to that point? The U.S. Supreme Court, in rejecting the death penalty for juvenile offenders four years ago, relied in part on the growing body of psychiatric evidence that shows why children often fail to act as responsibly as adults,

Dr. RICHARD RATNER (American Psychiatric Association): In a nutshell, it is that the brain has not really matured. You do not really have an adult brain until you are in your early 20s.

O’BRIEN: You have actual, empirical evidence of that?

Dr. RATNER: We do.

O’BRIEN: Ratner says that magnetic resonance imaging — MRIs like this one — show that juveniles use a different part of the brain in the decision-making process than adults, making them more likely to act irrationally, less likely to appreciate the consequences of what they do.

Roughly 25 percent of the juvenile offenders serving life with no parole for murder never murdered anyone; rather, they were following the lead of an older adult. But under what’s known in the law as the felony murder rule, they are just as guilty as those who pull the trigger and often sentenced just as harshly.

Prof. ANNINO: They follow these older adults, and then the adults commit a murder. So the kid never has the gun in his hand. The kid never touches the gun. Many times—

O’BRIEN: But he’s still charged with murder?

Prof. ANNINO: He is charged with murder and gets the exact same sentence.

O’BRIEN: An accessory is as guilty as the principal?

Prof. ANNINO: In the state of Florida it is exactly the same, and that’s the felony murder rule, and we have it not just in Florida, but around the country, and the felony murder rules denies the individuality of the child. It ignores the fact that you have a child here, and you’re treating the child just like an adult.

O’BRIEN: Among those who have problems with that, we were surprised to find the judge who had sentenced Kenneth Young to four consecutive life terms. Judge J. Rogers Padgett said judges have no way of knowing what might become of the children who appear before them and, at least where the victim doesn’t die, their fate should be left to the Department of Corrections.

Judge PADGETT: If I went and talked to Kenneth, I might have sympathy, too, because I firmly believe the Department of Corrections ought to be given the latitude to determine when these people are ready to go. What do I know? At the time of sentencing, I’m doing a snapshot. So what do I know?

O’BRIEN: But in Florida, as in most states, it’s too late to turn back the clock. Even the sentencing judge cannot reopen this case decided more than seven years ago.

Ms. YOUNG: It’s hard. It’s so hard — the sleepless nights that I have had. And every time I go to see my child, and I have to leave that prison without my baby, it just takes something out of me. It hurts. It hurts so bad.

O’BRIEN: Unless Florida changes its law, or the governor commutes the sentence, Kenneth Young will die in prison. He will never get out.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien in Tampa, Florida.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a report today on a conflict between solving crimes and protecting privacy. It’s called “familial searching.” Police can now take DNA from a crime scene and compare it to millions of DNA samples in a government database. If there is even a partial match, that could lead to the criminal by way of his or her family members if their DNA is in the database. And they could be completely innocent. Should that practice be legal? Lucky Severson reports.

Unidentified Man (working in lab): Stick it right back in there. Okay, and we’ll close it up right there. And this is the same thing, these are …

LUCKY SEVERSON: Three years ago, Pearl Wilson’s son Charles died in a Maryland prison while awaiting sentencing for rape. But for his mother, her son lives on.

PEARL WILSON: My son lives in me and I in him, and his blood is my blood, and my blood was in him.

SEVERSON: Though Charles is dead his DNA still sits in a databank. By law DNA has to be gathered from all felons. Some states even take it from arrestees. The DNA profiles remain there indefinitely.

Ms. WILSON: I’m worried about them continuously holding my son’s DNA in that database.

Pearl Wilson

SEVERSON: Attorney Stephen Mercer, who specializes in DNA issues, says Pearl Wilson has reason to be worried. He’s trying to get her son’s DNA expunged from the database because he’s concerned it might be used at some point for what is called familial searching, a new technology that has been used sparingly so far in the U.S. The most notable case was the so-called “BTK” serial killer, Dennis Rader. After 30 years and 10 murders, the BTK killer was finally caught after police obtained a DNA sample from his daughter that almost perfectly matched the DNA from her father’s crime scenes.

STEPHEN MERCER (Attorney): DNA between persons who are related is vastly more similar than DNA between persons who are unrelated. So when the government has the DNA of one family member, in effect, they have the DNA of that person’s siblings, children and parents.

SEVERSON: Here’s how it works. DNA from a crime scene is run against the nearly six million samples on file. If there’s a partial match, it likely means that a relative of someone in the database is guilty of a crime. This kind of testing could open up a whole new realm of possibilities for authorities. But critics warn that is could mark the beginning of dragnets, sweeping in people who are completely innocent and possibly violating their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Sonia Suter is a bioethics professor and she’s concerned that people will see only the benefits of familial testing and not the threat to personal privacy.

Professor SONIA SUTER (George Washington University Law School): There’s a lot of kinds of uses of this — of these samples that sound great. They look good on programs like “CSI” but they might involve probing too deeply into very personal information. Could the police decide they want to do broad scale research on these samples, and start investigating the samples for links to certain kinds of illnesses, or certain kinds of propensities for behavior?

Sonia Suter

SEVERSON: Professor Suter says familial testing without safeguards may be only the beginning of a very slippery slope.

Prof. SUTER: I think people might start to feel differently about this if they imagined all of the information that could potentially be obtained. And it will only get easier to do as we identify more genes. It will only be cheaper as the technology advances.

SEVERSON: Constitutional law professor Jeffrey Rosen says the use of familial testing could signal a dramatic challenge to American civil liberties.

Professor JEFFREY ROSEN (George Washington University Law School): There’s a very profound moral lesson. My mother taught it to me actually. She said, “You should be responsible not for what you think but what you do.” And yet that idea is really being challenged by an idea of genetic surveillance that would hold people accountable not for wrong doing but for wrong being.

MITCH MORRISSEY (District Attorney, Denver): There is no privacy right that is being violated by doing familial searching.

SEVERSON: : Mitch Morrissey, the District Attorney of Denver, is a vocal advocate for familial searching. He says it’s just another tool to track down leads, the way police use partial license plates and fingerprints.

Mr. MORRISSEY: The idea that there will be some people that will be talked to that may have nothing to do with this is not unusual when you look at police work.

SEVERSON: Familial testing could help bring many more criminals to justice, says medical geneticist Frederick Bieber, who works with law enforcement on DNA issues. He co-authored a study published in Science magazine.

Frederick Bieber

Dr. FREDERICK BIEBER (Medical Geneticist): ): Based on simulations, our data suggest that it could increase the yield of investigative leads by 40 percent. So it could substantially increase the number of cases that can be resolved through added investigative leads. Why? Because of the sad reality that habits of crime are often found more commonly in family members than in unrelated individuals.

SEVERSON: Statistics indicate crime does run in families: 46 percent of inmates, in one recent survey, said they had a blood relative also in jail. One black man in nine between the ages of 20 and 34, according to a recent Pew estimate, is now behind bars. With databanks getting larger because of familial testing, critics like Stephen Mercer worry that police will be even more likely to target those areas and those minorities whose only guilt is living in the wrong place.

Mr. MERCER: For minority populations who are already disproportionately in the database, you’re approaching a scenario where nearly a majority of some populations — minority based populations — are going to find themselves under genetic surveillance by the government.

Mr. MORRISSEY: Many, many of these crimes are crimes against persons of color – people that live in the same neighborhoods, and I talk to those people, and those people want these crimes solved.

Tony Lake

TONY LAKE (Chief Constable, Lincolnshire Police, England): I do think that the plight of victims is much underplayed.

SEVERSON: Tony Lake is the chief constable of the Lincolnshire police in England. The United Kingdom has used familial matching since 2002.

Mr. LAKE: It is perfectly reasonable and absolutely right that the rights of suspects should be considered and, as it were, maintained as paramount when they aren’t actually under investigation. But so too do the victims have rights. So too do the family of victims have rights. So yes, there are some very, very difficult issues which we’ve got to confront here. But frankly the bottom line is we believe it is a risk worth taking and it is a process well worth doing.

SEVERSON: Police in the UK have resolved murders and rapes and other cases by tracing the perpetrator through a relative’s genetic profile. One case involved a man who had been raping and terrorizing women for 20 years. Known as the “shoe rapist,” police finally discovered who he was when a DNA sample from one of the rapes was a close match to his sister, whose DNA profile was in the data base for a minor infraction.

Mr. LAKE: The way that we operate in the United Kingdom is that unless there is some other substantial evidence the use of DNA on its own will not be run by the Crown Prosecution Service, the equivalent of your state prosecutor. They simply will not entertain running on the basis of DNA evidence alone.

SEVERSON: U.S. authorities say they will also require other supporting evidence. But opponents argue that the FBI has been known to overstep its bounds in other investigations. And even though agents may be held accountable for overzealous prosecution, by then the damage to someone’s reputation has been done.

Ms. WILSON: I have not been in trouble a day in my life. They could come to my family members and even me. It is violating rights of innocent people.

SEVERSON: Pearl no longer needs to worry about her son’s DNA coming back to haunt the family, because Maryland has become the first state to ban familial testing. But several other states, with California in the lead, intend to approve familial searching, and that appears to be the national trend.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Around the U.S., there are more than a million warrants out for the arrest of people who’ve been accused of an offense, often minor, but who have not paid their fines or shown up in court. We have a report today on a new program organized by the Justice Department to encourage offenders to turn themselves in. It works, and it’s done in churches, as Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Nineteen-year-old Edacious and her cousin are on their way to church. She’s not here to worship; she’s here to surrender. There’s a warrant for her arrest on marijuana charges, and she has come to this church to turn herself in. Hundreds of others with outstanding warrants have also shown up.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Just to get this off my record, you know, to clear my conscience, for one thing.

SEVERSON: This is part of a two-year-old program coordinated by the Justice Department, called Fugitive Safe Surrender. It’s the brainchild of Pete Elliott, a member of the U.S. Marshals Service.

PETE ELLIOTT (U.S. Marshals Service): People have asked me why a church, and it’s simple. Churches give hope.

SEVERSON: A week earlier, Memphis religious leaders and law enforcement had announced at a well-publicized news conference that for four days fugitives, people wanted by the law for whatever reason, would be allowed to turn themselves in at a well-known church—this one in the African-American community. The church would be staffed with prosecutors, judges, and court personnel.

DAVID KUSTOFF (U.S. Attorney, speaking at news conference): And most importantly volunteers from New Salem Missionary Baptist Church to greet people and to welcome them as they come in, so that they can come in to an environment that is non-hostile.

DAVID JOLLEY (U.S. Marshal Service, speaking at news conference): This color flyer that you’ll see on this table up here is the flyer that the pastors have been taking back to their congregations. This is the flyer pastors take back to congregations, and their congregations have been handing out through the community.

MARK LUTTRELL (Sheriff, Shelby County, speaking at news conference): Many of these people will be able to clear up several warrants, which will make them law-abiding citizens and return them to the community in a productive way and will certainly assist us in law enforcement in clearing up this huge backlog.

SEVERSON: And what a backlog it was—37,000 outstanding warrants in Memphis alone.

The program got started in Cleveland two years ago. Memphis is now the sixth city to try it. In every case the program has exceeded expectations. Memphis is no exception.

Felony suspects who showed up were taken into custody, but most of those turning themselves in were wanted for minor offenses. A surprising number say that until now they felt they had no place to surrender. They’re afraid of the police and sheriffs’ departments. They’re afraid of going to jail. Many fugitives view the Memphis Justice Building itself as a place where people get lost and never found: the notorious 201 Poplar Street.

Pastor FRANK RAY (New Salem Missionary Baptist Church): 201 Poplar is a threat to most of them. And the reason is that you can go there, and what they did here in 30 minutes or an hour, two hours, it may take three days. That you can go there and surrender yourself—it may be three days before they’ll even hear your case, and you’re going to be stuck in prison for that many days, and some people have even gotten lost in the system.

Mr. JOLLEY: I think every major city has this big, intimidating-looking downtown jail. We certainly have one here. And coming to church and taking care of this, as opposed to going down there, that’s a strong appeal to a lot of people.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I’m here to turn myself in on a warrant for driving on a suspended and a DUI charge which I got four years ago in Memphis.

SEVERSON: Why are you here?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Violation of probation.

SEVERSON: Lots of the fugitives are accompanied by family members. This man brought a member of the clergy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE MINISTER: I came here to support him, to let him know it’s okay to go ahead and turn it around and put this behind him. And you can stop looking over your shoulder.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Man, I’ve had these warrants for probably five years, so it’s time. It’s hard. It’s hard to get a job. It’s hard to do anything.

SEVERSON: With the warrants?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Yeah, it’s rough. I mean, I really haven’t got anything to lose. I’ve got to start over. I need my life back.

SEVERSON: Jobs, food stamps, education—these things are out of reach for people with outstanding warrants. While they lineup to be processed, it’s red wristbands for fugitives, green ones for family members. The sheriff’s department doesn’t have the resources to round up the numbers of people who will turn themselves in over a four-day period. Here in Memphis, that was 1,500 people. First, their warrants are verified. They’re all fingerprinted and photographed. Then they wait for their turn in court.

Why was this church chosen? Because its pastor is respected in the community. Fugitives apparently trust the church more than they trust the police.

Pastor RAY: There’s been somewhat of a division between the justice system and the community, especially the religious community.

SEVERSON: Of the fugitives who have surrendered so far, 85 percent said they came in because it was a church.

(to fugitive): Does it feel better to you, coming here to a church?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Yeah, yeah.

David Jolley

SEVERSON: Rather than going to a big justice building?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Yeah, that makes a whole lot of difference.

SEVERSON: Because it’s a church, does that make any difference? I mean, does it feel like it’s a little more welcoming?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Well, that was my thought.

SEVERSON: Most cases are heard the same day, and the outcomes may be more lenient than they would be downtown.

MARY THORSBERG (Assistant District Attorney General): We try to fashion a settlement that will let these people get this over with today and go home with their cases disposed of.

Judge LOYCE LAMBERT RYAN (General Sessions Court, Division 15, Shelby County): Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

SEVERSON: The courtroom itself is in a chapel adjacent to the main church. Those who surrender are moved through as quickly as possible.

Judge RYAN: You understand by pleading guilty you’re waiving your rights? You’re charged with violation of probation. I’m going to release you on your own recognizance. All right sir, I’ll accept your plea and sentence you on the offense of driving on suspended license: one day in jail; credit for one day, October 22, to pay your costs. If you do not appear on September 26 then another warrant will be issued for you again. Do you understand that?

SEVERSON: Although Memphis is only about 60 percent black, almost all those who turned themselves in were African American. One reason they are issued so many warrants, according to the judge, is economics.

Judge RYAN: It becomes a revolving financial cycle—that if you don’t pay your reinstatement fee, you don’t pay your moving violations, it piles up. And so it’s a matter of finances. So it gets back down to core issues of poverty and income.

SEVERSON: Even though this is a church, some who showed up were afraid it might be a trap—a police sting operation.

Mr. ELLIOTT: We’ve done these things in the past. We’ve done them all over the country. I’ve been part of those, where we give out a free TV set to somebody, call them up; free Super Bowl tickets, free tickets for football, baseball game. Those things work. But it doesn’t build any trust between law enforcement and the community.

Pete Elliot

SEVERSON: Elliott’s idea for Fugitive Safe Surrender sprang from an incident in Cleveland when a police officer, a friend of his, was shot and killed making a routine traffic stop. The officer didn’t know the driver was wanted under a fugitive warrant.

Mr. JOLLEY: There’s always the possibility of a violent confrontation, for whatever reason, even on the smallest warrants. It may be that the person just didn’t want to go to jail that day, or they had something in their possession they didn’t want the officer to find. You see all these car chases on TV—the helicopters flying overhead, guys running through stop signs and red lights, and they don’t know why, you know. Officer tried to pull him over, and he took off. They can’t figure out why.

Mr. ELLIOTT: For every fugitive that peacefully and voluntarily surrenders, that’s one less dangerous confrontation our law enforcement officers have to have on the streets. I’ve been in law enforcement going on 25 years now. I feel the most comfort in my life when I’m at church. I feel the most peace when I’m at church. And I felt that individuals in the community that were wanted were basically no different than me.

SEVERSON: There was good news for the man who had brought a minister with him. Turns out there was no warrant for his arrest after all. But if this hadn’t been a church, he probably wouldn’t have shown up, wouldn’t have found out.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Well, by doing it at a church, man, you know, the church always has their arms open for you. It’s a safe spot.

SEVERSON: At least five other cities are hoping now to offer the surrender program. So your criminal justice system may soon be coming to a church near you.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Memphis.

ABERNETHY: The fugitive safe surrender idea is not free of controversy. A plan to introduce it in New Jersey was blocked because of concerns that it would cross the line between church and state.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now a story about a former state legislator who believed the answer to crime was more and more prisons — until he got locked up himself. Now he’s leading a faith-based program for prisoner rehabilitation, and he says it works. Compared to a national recidivism rate of 67 percent, for his ex-cons, he says, it is just eight percent. Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: It’s been a long haul for Pat Nolan, raised in a family of nine children in a crime-ridden Los Angeles neighborhood.

PAT NOLAN (President, Justice Fellowship, Prison Fellowship Ministries): Crime was an absolute part of our life there to the point that every time you went out, whether to church or school or the store, you were in danger of being robbed or knocked down and beaten.

SEVERSON: Then, after Catholic school and law school, Nolan won a seat in the California Assembly and became the Republican minority leader hell-bent on putting the bad guys in prison.

Mr. NOLAN: We built more new prisons than any state in history. We built more — I think it was 11 or 12 prisons, not one new university, and I think that’s a sad commentary. But at the time I thought that would make us safer.

JACK COWLEY (Former Warden, Oklahoma Department of Corrections): He was a madman. He was Attila the Hun when it comes to lock them up and throw away the key.

SEVERSON: But then the “lock-em-up” assemblyman got locked up himself, caught accepting illegal campaign contributions in an FBI sting. Nolan spent over two years in prison and was shocked at what he experienced there.

Mr. NOLAN: I saw virtually nothing was being done to change the mind or hearts of the inmates. Nothing was being done to prepare them to live healthy productive lives when they got out.

SEVERSON: Suddenly the hard-nosed prison builder had a change of mind and heart himself. He found a new calling — reforming the system he helped build, a system he now calls human warehousing. He’s still in favor of locking up the bad guys but says there are too many people who could be productive citizens languishing behind bars. And he is not alone. Mike Schnobrich is with the Council of Prison Locals and a guard at the U.S. prison in Florence, Colorado.

MIKE SCHNOBRICH (Council of Prison Locals and Guard, United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, Florence, Colorado): When I hired on back in ‘92, we were told that we no longer engaged in any sort of rehabilitation. If an inmate has a drug problem, they can do a little bit of drug treatment, they can get a GED, but not a whole lot more after that. And so it really is, for the most part, almost a warehousing operation. And I think there’s not too many people in the system who would disagree.

SEVERSON: Nolan now heads a faith-based program that operates in several states called Justice Fellowship, an arm of Prison Fellowship Ministries. It offers mentoring programs for inmates while they’re still in prison and when they get out, so they’ll stay out. This year 650,000 Americans will be coming home from prison, most of them unprepared to re-enter society. That worries former wardens like Jack Cowley.

Mr. COWLEY: Because [we] can no longer tolerate a 67 percent recidivism rate in this country. It’s not tolerable, and we’re not going to put up with it anymore. Quite frankly, it’s got to stop.

SEVERSON: He says the broken system is costing American tax payers billions of wasted dollars each year.

Mr. COWLEY: You can’t afford, as a taxpayer, a $60 billion ticket for crime in this country any longer. Bridges are falling down, people, and we cannot afford to take this money and put it in something that is no longer working.

SEVERSON: There are two sets of statistics that help explain the impact on our society of U.S. prison policy. Number one: 95 percent of Americans sentenced to prison are going to be coming out, maybe to your neighborhood. Number two: as many as seven out of 10 of those will end up back in prison within three years. There are so few rehabilitation programs very few offenders are prepared to make it on the outside. And it’s no wonder that most employers won’t hire them.

One exception is Korns Galvanizing in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. At any given time, at least half the workers here are ex-cons like Jack Shipley who spent over 43 years of his life behind bars for burglary and robbery. He’s was shocked when he applied at Korns over three years ago.

JACK SHIPLEY (Employee, Korns Galvanizing Company): And then I explained to Mr. Heider who I was and what I was in this town, and he said, “We don’t care. We don’t care at all.” He said, “What we care about is what you can do, you know, if you can work.”

BARRY HEIDER (Vice President, Operations, Korns Galvanzing Company): A lot of these fellows just pump me up. They’ve got smiles on their faces and an attitude to succeed.

SEVERSON: Barry Heider is the boss here, the man who was willing to take the risk, and it’s a risk that’s paid off. The company is preparing a study on how many of the 150 or so ex-con employees have stayed out of prison, but Heider says he’s certain Korns’ rate of success is much better than the national average.

Mr. HEIDER: But I think our success rate altogether is far better, and, again, that has to do with support, what they receive allegedly from the penal system is guidance. But there’s no support.

SEVERSON: The support comes from one another, from people like Harry Price, in prison 10 years for robbery. He’s been out seven and is now the plant supervisor.

HARRY PRICE (Plant Supervisor, Korns Galvanizing Company): It has what we call Korns love. We’re a little rough on each other, but we won’t let someone else come in here and be rough on us.

SEVERSON: Religion is an important part of the program here, although no particular religion. Most employees attend church services and receive constant mentoring from the old-timers.

Pat Nolan firmly believes that without religion most rehab programs won’t work.

Mr. NOLAN: And the problem is we do nothing to reform the character of inmates to change their heart. They have no moral framework to decide whether something’s good or bad.

SEVERSON: Nolan is becoming a loud voice nationally for prison reform. Governor Schwarzenegger has appointed him to a strike team to fix California’s prison system. He travels extensively, speaks constantly, and spends a good deal of time lobbying Congress. He has become a force to be reckoned with. Jack Cowley said at first he was skeptical of Nolan’s motives.

Mr. COWLEY: Oh, here’s just another one of those politicians who went to prison and found the Lord, and, you know, I’ve got to put up with this. But he is the genuine deal. Yes, the genuine deal.

Mr. NOLAN: Morally we have to care about them. This is a child of God, and just as they have sinned, we’ve sinned, and if we can accept Jesus’ forgiveness, how can we deny it to them?

SEVERSON: Many of the prisoners released this year were incarcerated for nonviolent crimes like drug possession, which landed Sedrick Crochron in prison. He’s now a Korns employee.

SEDRICK CROCHRON (Employee, Korns Galvanizing Company): I had a son. I tried to take care of him the fast way and, you know, “Johnny Lawman” caught up with me.

SEVERSON: What’s changed in Sedrick’s life is that he now has a skill and someone who cares for him.

Mr. CROCHRON: They’re excellent bosses. I like Harry and Barry. They’re like the uncles I never had.

SEVERSON: Pat Nolan says there’s overwhelming evidence that Justice Fellowship does work.

Mr. NOLAN: A University of Pennsylvania study studied our graduates with a matched set of people with similar offenses. Those that graduated from our program, completed it all, had an eight percent recidivism rate.

SEVERSON: There are still wardens who are reluctant to allow such things as mentoring programs, but reformers like Jack Cowley are fighting back.

Mr. COWLEY: What we tell wardens is you’re no longer the king, as I used to be, quite frankly, behind these walls, because what goes on here affects my life outside. It affects my public safety. And what I tell wardens is, okay, you don’t want to reduce recidivism — fine. I’ll just call the local newspaper and tell them that you’re not interested in providing programs that work.

SEVERSON: Pat Nolan is convinced that his time in prison was all part of God’s plan to get him where he is today.

Mr. NOLAN: C.S. Lewis says that we’re like God’s sculptures, and it’s the chisel strokes that are so painful that he uses to make us his work of art.

SEVERSON: These days you’ll find this sculpture-in-motion lobbying Congress and anyone who will listen for a new Second Chance Act to help prisoners re-enter society.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Today, we have a special look at the gang world of Los Angeles, a place where violent death is common and hope, scarce — but not totally absent, thanks to a dedicated, savvy priest. Lucky Severson begins his report on the street with a gang member.

LUCKY SEVERSON: He goes by the name of Angel and he is in the process of trying to undo what he has done a good part of his life. Like most gang members or “gang bangers,” in addition to his life of street crime, Angel was a graffiti artist. We look at the scribble and see scribble. Angel sees something else.

(To Angel): Angel, what is the point of this?

ANGEL: For fame. See who can write the most. The more you see that name, the more respect and fame you get among them and their peers.

SEVERSON: So when a gang member does this and it is cool, it elevates his prestige?

ANGEL: His prestige. It shows how good he is. You know, he has style. All of these matter amongst them.

SEVERSON: Angel was one of them, until prison and now this effort at redemption. His real family was messed up and drugged out. His gang family took care of him, and he took care of them. Angel was no angel.

ANGEL: Wherever you have your friends, you stick together as tight as you can.

SEVERSON: But you take other kids’ lives?

ANGEL: Well, you have to before they take yours. What are you going to do? If someone is coming to your block and is going to shoot you, what are you going to do, let them shoot you down? Let them shoot your friends? It can’t go down that way. So, it’s sad that you have to die just for a stupid street.

SEVERSON: Robert is another homeboy — local slang for kids in a gang. Except for the eight years in prison for car-jackings and robbery, the gang was the only family he knew.

ROBERT: I joined a gang for a family. I never had one when I was growing up. I joined the gang for a family. That’s it.

SEVERSON: Now they have a new gang, which is also their employer: Homeboy Industries. They call their boss “G-dog” or “Father G” — also known as Father Greg Boyle, Jesuit priest of the poorest pastorate in Los Angeles.

Father GREG BOYLE: I buried my first kid in 1988. I buried my 128th yesterday. There is a lethal absence of hope in a community like this. You get more kids planning their funerals than their futures. And what you hope to do, especially in a program like this, is to help them conjure up an image of what tomorrow will look like, because if you can’t see your future, you aren’t going to find your present very compelling. And that is a dangerous place to be.

SEVERSON: The surrounding neighborhood may not look dangerous. But of the 750 gang killings in Los Angeles over the past three years, many took place here, in broad daylight. Not a great place to grow up. And in the middle of it — Homeboy Industries, founded by Father Boyle and funded mostly by private contributions. Over the years, Homeboy has employed and found jobs for hundred of wasted gang members.

Father BOYLE: We get 1,000 folks a month. If they walk in, that’s hugely successful. It means they have taken this very important step, you know. It is like recovery, drug rehab. If you walk into a drug rehab, it doesn’t matter where you have been or how long you have been a drug addict: Welcome, this is really significant.

(To gang members): You guys taking care of business? What about school? What happened to school?

SEVERSON: And if they don’t cut it, he fires them. But those who stick around learn how to present themselves to a skeptical society, politely. And for the first time in their lives, they learn how to work. But it’s more than just work.

Father BOYLE: It is absolutely all religious. There is no kind of “Here’s the part that is spiritual, here’s the part that is God. Here is the part that speaks a spiritual message,” you know. It is far more important not to announce a message to the folks that come in here, but to become that message to the folks that come in here.

SEVERSON: Many come in, like Robert, regretting the body art they once thought was cool.

ROBERT: My first one was this, and it is gang related. Honestly, I do regret them. I wish I had none.

SEVERSON: It’s hard to get a job in a body that screams that you’re a gang banger. So Father Boyle brought in a doctor and bought a laser. There’s a waiting list to get tattoos removed. For Gloria, it’s a matter of erasing something she actually thought was fun.

GLORIA: Out on the street with my homeboys, they give me respect, I give them respect. It was just fun at the time.

SEVERSON: Gloria is not typical. Only one in 20 gang members is a girl. In this area, almost all are Latinos. Gloria’s home life was miserable. She was 16 when she joined a gang.

GLORIA: I could have lost my life a lot of times.

SEVERSON: In what kind of situations?

GLORIA: Number one, almost all of them shootings. You can’t even tell what kind of car I had. It was just full of bullet holes. It was funny at that time and it was down, what we did. I think back now, just to think I could have lost my life. My son could have lost his mom. Yeah.

Father BOYLE: It is about kids who don’t care. The kids who are shooting are kids who don’t want to kill. They want to die.

JOE: They shot me four times in the head with a .38 slug.

SEVERSON: Joe was shot after he retaliated for the drive-by killing of his five-year-old son.

JOE: I wasn’t into drugs. I was more into gangs. That was my drug. That was my addiction. It gave me a sense of power. It gave me control, respect, even though I had all those terms twisted. I didn’t know what the definition of “respect” was, except for fear. That’s what I thought it was.

SEVERSON: Withdrawing from gang life is similar to recovering from an addiction. It’s never-ending.

ANGEL: It never leaves. Because there’s still people that still know me. I still have enemies at this stage. It always follows you, you know. Anything in your life follows you.

SEVERSON: It followed fellow homeboy Miguel Gomez, who was shot and killed in June removing graffiti.

ANGEL: It is not as fun as it used to be. We are not as at ease as we used to be. Now we are more, I mean, a little bit leery.

Father BOYLE: These are human beings who deserve a chance. Not even a second chance, you know. Who gave them their first one, you know? And that is what this place stands for.

SEVERSON: Police said the shooting was an old vendetta not related to Homeboy, and so the project moves on.

Father BOYLE: It is heartache and hilarity all in the same day, you know, and you’re fully engaged in the lives of people and it is eternally interesting and it’s heart soaring as you watch people possess who they are. It couldn’t be better.

SEVERSON: There’s been a shooting just right down the street, half a block away. A half hour after our interview with Father Boyle, it was all heartache.

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE CAPTAIN: We had a homicide today and that occurred about 12:30. And what we know at the present time is that the victim does work for Homeboys Incorporated.

SEVERSON: The victim was shot several times a hundred yards from the Homeboy office, on his way to remove graffiti. His name was Arturo Casas. He was 25. For homeboys, it was another death in the family.

ROBERT: Unfortunately, the gang-banging life only leads down two roads, you know. You basically go to jail or you get buried.

SEVERSON: Arturo was the 129th gang banger Father Boyle has buried. For the time being, Father G has suspended graffiti removal. But he hasn’t suspended hope.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in south central Los Angeles.