Janet Taylor had been to jail for the umpteenth time. If the cops hadn’t arrested her when they did, she’s certain she’d be dead because her body was almost completely dehydrated, malnourished, and emaciated. She was in jail for the same old thing: prostitution.
It all began with her recreational use of cocaine, the monster from the pit of hell. She started out using it only at parties with “special”
friends. However, soon it turned out she liked cocaine more than life itself because of the feeling of euphoria it provided. Soon she was
using it secretly and by the time she knew what hit her, she had a full-fledged drug addiction. She had a monster on her back and didn’t
know how to get it off.
At the age of 16 Corey Purdie was convicted as an adult and placed in the custody of to the NC Department of Corrections. With the help of prison ministry volunteers, Corey committed his life to Christ while in prison. After serving 8 years, Purdie was released. Following his release, Purdie developed a friendship with Jeff Smith, a local pastor who mentored him as a father figure. Smith instilled hope in Purdie through Biblical text like Jeremiah 29:11 and reminding Purdie that he still had a purpose beyond his past.
At 24, Lynn Burke was struggling to feed her four children. She had moved to North Carolina to be closer to her mother, but her mother died less than a year after her arrival. Desperate, she reached out to her husband’s family in Tennessee, hoping that a sister-in-law would come to Raleigh and help. Instead, Burke said, that phone call brought her husband and his drug problems back into her life. Burke was depressed. She began writing bad checks and stealing. Within six months she was arrested, and soon she was headed to prison, sentenced to 10 years for eight felony counts of false pretense and writing bad checks. At the time, her children were 5, 4 (twins) and 3, and she was a student at N.C. State University. It was 1987.
Rev. Reggie Longcrier has been the Chaplain of Catawba Correctional Center in Newton, N.C. For 22 years, and it’s hard to believe that one of the most respected community leaders in this area spent 25 years going in and out of prison while addicted to heroin and cocaine. In “From Disgrace to Dignity” his journey begins on the street corners of Atlantic City, N.J. where he began his life of crime as a young boy with purse snatching, shoplifting, and breaking and entering. He began serving time in reformatories at age eleven and graduated as an adult to some of the roughest prisons in the country including Rahway and Rikers Island.
Rosa Bryant a native of Raleigh N.C. Her parents moved to Baltimore Maryland when she was eleven years old, and there is where she graduated from high school. \
As a high school student she started hanging with the wrong crowd and indulging in alcohol and drugs. As a young adult, she moved back to Raleigh and continued to affiliate with negative people. Later she began using hard drugs which brought about criminal behavior and that landed her in jail more times than I care to count. Prisons and jails became her second home. I became a revolving door to prison, with no direction. She lost focus on what was important in life (herself, living, morals, values, etc…). Her unhealthy choices were high prices to pay.
