"Faith-based organizations, as a matter of public policy, have been designated first-responders by default. But they're being asked to do it with no resources," according to one pastor who works with ex-offenders.

"As chaplains we absorb people’s sadness, their brokenness, their depth of spiritual despair," says Dennis Gibbs, an Episcopal chaplain at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles. "In many ways we hold for these inmates what they cannot hold for themselves."

Today there are two million inmates in US prisons and jails, and according to social policy analyst Eric Cadora our overdependence on criminal justice is threatening our cities, communities, and neighborhoods.