Where most people saw a revolving door, Sheriff Adam King saw a chance to break the cycle — and he turned to a group of women who already knew how to help others rebuild their lives.
For years, Sheriff Adam King watched the same hard pattern repeat inside the Johnson County Jail: men and women making destructive choices rooted in despair, addiction, low self-esteem, rejection, and a feeling of worthlessness — then returning again and again for the same offenses. For too many, the jail had become a revolving door.
He believed it didn’t have to stay that way. King saw a need, and a vision: that incarcerated men and women could have a real opportunity to change their lives through faith — that God’s path could lead them somewhere better than the one they’d been on, and that the change could ripple out to their families, too.
A good fit: women who had spent years helping women
To make it real, King found the resources and funding to pursue the effort, and he enlisted the women who had been teaching for years at the Christian Women’s Job Corps. It was a natural fit. Those instructors were already walking alongside women who had taken a wrong turn or simply needed practical life skills — how to use a computer, how to build a résumé, how to prepare for a job. King envisioned women mentoring women: helping them find hope and healing through faith while they gained the tools to stand on their own.
The jail ministry that grew out of that vision is committed to serving women and their specific needs — walking beside them on a path of restoration and renewal.
“He envisioned women mentoring women to help them find hope and healing through faith.”
The proof, years later
The measure of success isn’t a headline — it’s who doesn’t come back. By that measure, the ministry has worked for years: fewer women returning to the same cycle. And there’s a quieter measure, too. When Sheriff King runs into these women out in the community — carrying a new faith and a new start — the vision is proven all over again, not on paper, but in a life that changed course.
Shared with the site by Sharon Capps, a volunteer with the Christian Women’s Job Corps jail ministry.