“And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse,” Malachi 4:6, KJV.

The United States is facing both a cultural and a spiritual crisis. Approximately 2.1 million individuals are behind bars in state and federal prisons across the U.S., and many of them are fatherless and/or fathers themselves. Fatherlessness is linked to increased chances of committing a crime and becoming incarcerated, so this reality about the current prison population are not entirely surprising.

But another equally sobering fact regarding crime and incarceration is often forgotten. More than 95% of the prison population will be released back into society, but the majority of them will end up right back where they started — behind bars.