JumpStart Leaders Bring Christ's Word to Prisons

By Bob Castello
SJCS Communications Manager

Cary Sanders was arrested 17 times by the age of 17. Soon after his 17th birthday he shot someone during an armed robbery. He was in the Greenville County Detention Center at the age of 18 facing a life sentence.

"The only thing I was thinking about was suicide," he said. "I didn't have any hope. I thought I had ruined my life forever, and there wasn't anything I could do to recover from it.

"But the night I was planning to end my life, I remembered that someone had given me a copy of the Bible that I had been too cool to even be seen with, so I had just put it under my jailhouse mattress. I got that Bible out and I flipped it open, and there was an article titled, 'How to Have a New Life.' I began reading, and it was the first time that I had heard the message of the Christian faith.

"That night I asked Christ into my life."

Twelve years later, Mr. Sanders, 38, is Chief Executive Officer of JumpStart in South Carolina, a nontraditional form of prison ministry aimed at producing life change and, most important, a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Mr. Sanders and JumpStart Chief of Staff Catherine Davis spoke to a gathering in the Meeting Room at St. Joseph's this past week as part of the Leadership Speaker Series, led by junior Baylor Jennings.
 

JumpStart is a 24-month, Christ-centered program that offers participants a transitional housing program, during which JumpStart continues to support them after release, providing housing, transportation, financial training and other essential resources to help them build stable, successful lives.

"The work is super important for our participants who are building relationships with the Lord, coming to know Christ and becoming productive citizens in society, where they are able to go out and make disciples after becoming disciples," Ms. Davis said.

Mr. Sanders said in South Carolina it costs $37,000 a year to keep an individual incarcerated; 65 percent of those incarcerated have children. If the parents don't get their lives back on track, the children of those prisoners are 80 times more likely to get involved in the criminal justice system, he said.

In the U.S., 68 percent of people who are released from incarceration, on average, will return within three years; in South Carolina, 18 percent will return within three years. 

JumpStart serves over 1,800 people who have been released, and less than four percent have returned to prison, Mr. Sanders said; at $37,000 per year, that has a cumulative effect of $66 million per year.

Mr. Sanders said that about 80 percent of those incarcerated in this country come from homes without fathers, and almost all of them come from about 150 percent below the federal poverty line. The average education level of an individual incarcerated in South Carolina is the sixth grade.

"I'm here today because people chose to not see me for all of my mistakes, but they chose to help me become who God had created me to be."

"So it's a huge societal challenge and burden, but our numbers demonstrate that when people are getting opportunities and getting instruction and a pathway they can prosper," he said.

And he points to himself as an example.

He grew up about 20 minutes north of Travelers Rest, one of four siblings raised by a single mother in a area in which he said if you could "get your hands on drugs and win fights," you could gain the approval of other boys and girls in middle school.

That environment led to his series of arrests and eventually to thoughts of suicide.

Mr. Sanders was fortunate to have read the Bible that night and then to have discovered people who cared.

"So today I'm married and I have two beautiful children," he said. "I have some educational achievements that I'm proud of.

"I'm here today because people chose to not see me for all of my mistakes, but they chose to help me become who God had created me to be."

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