Correcting the Course of Corrections

“There’s no calvary coming. No white knight riding in on a horse. No politician, no movement, nothing. Nada. Zilch. It’s up to you.”

The men nodded along solemnly. I prayed my words would find a place in their hearts. I prayed that this time would be different, that someone would heed my cry, that someone would step up.

The old adage is true. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. I’d led the horses to water. Now it was up to them to drink.

I’ve shared some variation of this “Be the change you want to see” message in countless prisons and youth detention centers. The gist of my message is this – the only way prisons get better is through two things: 1) God, and 2) the prisoners themselves. No politician is going to run for office on a campaign to fix our broken prison system. As our prison population continues to swell (53,280 in state prison in Georgia and around 25,000 in Tennessee), things are going to get worse. Facilities are going to continue to age and break down and more and more guards are going to quit or abandon their posts because the prison’s doors don’t lock and the cameras are inoperable. Who one wants to risk their life at work every day for a job that pays less than $50,000 a year? Fewer guards mean more violence, more contraband, more drugs. The situation will continue to spiral. It’s happening in Georgia as you read this.  

In 2018, researchers concluded that nine people were murdered inside Georgia prisons. In 2025, they estimate that over 100 people were murdered behind prison walls. On Christmas Eve, one of my former students was found dead in a cell. The coroner ruled that he had been dead for at least two days. His body had started to decompose when they found him. He laid there dead, unnoticed, for two days. He’d been put in a cell with a known white supremacist gang member. He was black. He had just turned 21.

Meanwhile, from 2018 to 2025, Georgia’s correctional budget has soared.

Per the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, “For Fiscal Year 2026, Governor Brian Kemp proposed a $1.62 billion budget for the Georgia Department of Corrections. This proposed budget is $125 million higher than what was approved for FY 2025.” On March 3, Governor Kemp amended the budget to include “An additional $150 million for the Department of Corrections to address critical bed space needs, over $9.7 million for additional Corrections Officers, $15 million for a new K-9 training facility at the Georgia Department of Public Safety Headquarters.”

Of that more than $1.7 billion budget, a mere $2 million is earmarked for vocational education programs. That means that for every $850 spent on surveillance technology, new prisons, correctional staff salaries, and food in prisons, we invest $1 in teaching incarcerated people skills designed to prevent them from returning to prison.

Again. There’s no white knight coming. No calvary.

The message I share is clear: Things won’t get better without Christ-centered programming inside prisons. Things won’t get better until those in prison decide to work together and make them better. The men and women inside prison have to stop fighting one another, stop joining gangs, stop using drugs, stop killing each other. They have to make the collective decision to put a stop to the madness. And for this, they need Jesus. To borrow a phrase from our friend Burl Cain, they need “moral rehabilitation.”

Without moral rehabilitation, the state is just going to keep building more and more prisons. And these prisons will get more and more expensive. Per the Georgia budget, “The 2026 House budget recommends using $220 million of the state’s undesignated surplus to fund the design and construction of a new 480-bed single-celled private prison facility for low to medium-security inmates to free up much needed bedspace.

Georgia taxpayers like you and me will be spending $458,333 per cell in that new prison. At a private prison. Which means the prison will be privately owned, aka, a for profit prison.

$458,333 for a 54-square-foot cell. Not an apartment or a home. A cell the size of a parking space.

I recently gave an assignment to our horticulture students. Modeling Benjamin Franklin, they were to choose six maxims that they live their life by. They were to compile these maxims into a list and explain each of them in a paragraph. At the end, they were to write one page reflecting on which maxim is hardest for them to follow.

Reading response after response, I was filled with hope. Our students got it. They were going to be the change we so desperately need to see.

One student, Ricky, wrote this:

When pressure is crushing around me I look towards Jesus.

People ask me why are you so happy here in prison. I tell them I have perfect peace due to Jesus carrying me through the storms in my lifetime. It’s not easy, but I manage with His help. We just need to start respecting others in order to live in a peaceful world.

Here in prison it seems like people want to fight against authority, other gangs, or just be against each other. This tension and violence has led to injuries or even death in some cases. We need to focus on peaceful resolutions instead of fighting. Let’s be peacemakers in our daily lives and work together to unite around the mission of tranquility.

It starts with me. Who will join my peace coalition?

We can keep spending more and more money on prisons only to get the same result we’ve seen for years. More deaths, more violence, more drugs, more staff turnover.

Or we can do something different.

We can bring God into our prisons. We can provide vocational programming and training. We can give people hope and a new identity in Christ.

Or we can continue down the continued course -- the road of insanity.

HeartBound will continue to walk the only road we know. And we need your support. We need your prayers, your donations, and your time. We need you to come alongside us however you can. Whether it’s through volunteering once a month or once a year. Whether it’s by donating $10 or $10,000.

But we need you. Incarcerated men, women, and youth need you.

Thank you for being agents for change. Thank you for shining Light in the darkness. Please continue to pray each day at 1:33 p.m.

We need you.