One Barrel At A Time: Mapping A Route Across The Prison Recidivism Desert

In April 2005, two days after my seventy-sixth birthday, I became the Protestant chaplain at California Correctional Center in Susanville, California. The warden hired me for the job of creating a faith-based rehabilitation program, taught by inmates, supported by unpaid outside volunteers. It was anticipated that it could be a rehabilitation program for the twenty-six state prisons in California, as well a challenge for the myriad jails and prisons throughout the United States. To overcome...