A former politician, Mark Earley talks with prisoners as head of the Prison Fellowship Ministry.

As a Virginia state senator and attorney general, Mark Earley spent much of the 1980s and ’90s trying to put more criminals in jail.

Now, he helps prisoners get the support and guidance they need to become leaders both inside prison and on the outside.

Earley, now 54, found his new calling during a period of self-reflection after his defeat in the Virginia gubernatorial race of 2001. Before he took over leadership of the Prison Fellowship Ministry in 2002, he was more interested in putting criminals in jail than in ministering to the needs of inmates, ex-convicts and their families, as well as their victims.

“I didn’t see how, at the midpoint of my life, it would be worth investing my life in people who didn’t have a future and hope,” Earley says. “I wanted to invest myself in people who were poised to have a strategic influence in society. I didn’t want to pour my life down a rat hole.”

Indeed, Earley had risen to prominence as a Christian conservative on a strong tough-on-crime platform. He helped institute policies in Virginia that helped abolish parole, created “three strikes and you’re out” legislation, built many new prisons and lowered the age at which juveniles could be tried as adults from 16 to 14. Such policies have helped swell the U.S. prison population tenfold over the past three decades.

“When I looked at prisoners, I didn’t really see people,” he recalls. “I saw criminals. I saw people who were the stories I saw on the evening news or splashed across the front page of the papers. I didn’t really look at them as people with the capacity to change.”

Rereading the Scriptures changed Earley’s thinking.

“I was struck by the fact that Moses, before all the great things we remember him for, had killed a person and was really a fugitive from justice before God came to him and asked him to lead Israel out of Egypt,” he says.

Likewise, he found that St. Paul, one of the founders of Christianity, was a co-conspirator in murder. “He was going around violently punishing people for following this messiah named Jesus,” Earley says.

The former state senator became convinced that simple rehabilitation was not enough. He believed prisoners could become leaders who could break the cycle that leads more people into crime and into the nation’s overcrowded prisons. He believes, education, mental health counseling and drug treatment can provide the support an ex-prisoner often needs to readjust to life on the outside and reduce recidivism.

Earley tells the story of a prisoner serving a maximum sentence for violence and drug-related charges in Iowa. In his outlaw biker gang, he had been the “enforcer” – the one who made people pay if a drug deal went sour. In prison, he tried to kill a warden.

Today, after going through a Prison Fellowship Ministry program, the man has undergone what both Earley and the attacked warden call a “profound transformation.” A leader within the prison, he works with prison officials to mitigate conflict within the prison community.

About a year ago, he agreed to live in a maximum security lock-down unit rife with gang problems. “He lived in the same cell with the ringleader, and after several weeks he calmed down (the ringleader) because of his leadership and influence,” Earley said.

The Prison Fellowship Ministry also helps states reform their criminal justice systems. It assisted in passage of the Prison Rape Elimination bill and led an effort last March to pass the Second Chance Act, which was signed by President Bush. The legislation authorizes $362 million to help ex-prisoners get back on their feet, aiding in job and literacy training, substance abuse treatment, counseling and housing.

“A lot of those tools I have about understanding how policy gets developed and legislation gets made and passed come in very handy,” he says.