“First Stop Dying”

This article offers an ethnographic account of the self-projects of inmate graduates of Louisiana State Penitentiary\u27s (aka Angola\u27s ) unique prison seminary program. Angola\u27s Inmate Minister program deploys seminary graduates in bivocational pastoral service roles throughout America\u27s largest maximum-security prison. Drawing upon the unique history of Angola, inmates establish their own churches and serve in lay-ministry capacities in hospice, cellblock visitation, tier ministry, officiating inmate funerals, and through tithing with care packages for indigent prisoners. Four themes of positive criminology prominently emerge from inmate narratives: (a) the importance of respectful treatment of inmates by correctional administrations, (b) the value of building trusting relationships for prosocial modeling and improved self-perception, (c) repairing harm through intervention, and (d) spiritual practice as a blueprint for positive self-identity and social integration among prisoners

Religiously Motivated Desistance

This article examines the life-history narratives of 25 successful ex-offenders professing Christianity as the source of their desistance. Unstructured in-depth life-history interviews from adult male desisters affirm use of a feared self and cognitive shifts regarding perceptions of illegal behavior. Condemnation scripts and redemption narratives, however, differ radically from those uncovered in previous research. Stories of behavior change and identity transformation achieved through private religious practice and energetic church membership dominate the narratives. Findings suggest there are diverse phenomenologies of desistance and that by more narrowly tailoring research to explore subjectivities in the desistance process, important discrepancies in perceptions of agency and structure are revealed. Three prominent desistance paradigms - Making Good, Cognitive Transformation, and Identity Theory - are used to examine the narratives