The Redemption Project: Redemption Stories

Before The Shack reached strangers, Wm. Paul Young had to face the damage he had caused among the people who knew him best.

In our conversation, he describes a crisis at 38, when his wife, Kim, discovered his affair. He does not present that moment as an instant transformation. He says the work of rebuilding their marriage took 11 years. The book that would change his life came afterward, written as a Christmas gift for his children.

That order matters. The success of a book is not the same thing as the repair of a life.

Paul joined me on The Redemption Project to talk about that repair, the unexpected journey of The Shack, and the questions behind Return to the Shack: A Journey into Redemption. What began with his own history became a conversation about the people we struggle to forgive, the harm we cannot pretend away, and what Christians mean when we talk about redemption.

The person before the author

Young describes growing up as a missionary's child in New Guinea, experiencing abuse, being sent to boarding school, and eventually returning to Canada. He talks about learning to perform for other people: reading their expectations, creating a version of himself that could meet them, and keeping the damaged parts out of view.

In his telling, creativity and intelligence did not automatically make him healthy. They could also help him hide.

Those experiences provide context for his life. They do not make the harm he later caused disappear. Young speaks about his affair, his wife's response, and the long process of facing what he had carried into their marriage. There is no claim here that saying the right words repaired everything. He describes years of work.

He also describes a faith shaped by the distance between the Jesus he trusted and the picture of God the Father he had inherited. Working through that tension became part of his personal rebuilding and, eventually, part of his writing.

A gift that traveled beyond the family

Young says he was working three jobs when he wrote The Shack. One of those jobs was janitorial work. He remembers making 12 copies at Office Depot, giving the book to his children, and handing the extras to friends.

The friends passed it along. Then messages began arriving from people he did not know.

What unsettled him was not simply that strangers liked the story. They were telling him where it had met them in grief, loss, and questions about God. He recalls reaching out to an author he knew because he did not know how to answer those messages.

We talk about the publishing decisions that followed, the book's unexpected reach, and the film adaptation. Young keeps returning to the same distinction: being part of something meaningful is not the same as building an identity around its success.

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When redemption has a face

The conversation turns toward Young's friendships with men on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

He describes a relationship that began when someone asked him to sign a copy of The Shack for a prisoner. Young wanted to deliver it himself. Over time, those visits became friendships and helped shape the questions he brings to Return to the Shack.

As he describes the sequel, the question is no longer only what a grieving father experiences in an encounter with God. It is what happens when that father must face the person who caused the harm, and when the rest of the family must live with everything that has happened.

That is where words such as justice, mercy, forgiveness, and accountability become harder to keep at a distance. Recognizing someone's humanity does not require pretending the harm was small. Nor does speaking about redemption settle every question about consequences.

For me, that tension reaches back to the beginning of The Redemption Project: listening to people who had been incarcerated and asking about their faith, their decisions, and the lives they were trying to rebuild.

A conversation that leaves the disagreement in

Paul and I do not approach every theological question from the same place. We discuss human nature, sin, salvation, and what it means to be made in the image of God. He challenges ideas I hold as a Calvinist. I explain why those convictions do not remove my commitment to telling redemption stories.

The disagreement remains in the episode. This is a conversation, not a statement that either of us has adopted everything the other believes.

What also remains is the willingness to keep talking. Young asks whether I believe anyone is irredeemable. My answer is no. From there, we discuss why we answer that question as we do and what our answers mean for how we treat people.

We close with prayer, not because all the differences have disappeared, but because a difficult conversation can still end with care for the person across from us.

Listen to the full conversation with Wm. Paul Young. The questions are worth more than a quick answer.

Content note: This conversation includes discussion of childhood sexual abuse, infidelity, incarceration, grief, and strong language.

Recorded: September 1, 2026.

I am a retired detective and criminal justice / government educator based in Tennessee. I founded The Redemption Project, as a place to focus on civics, rebuild non-partisan trust, and provide educational and emotional grace while learning about the news. I also have a column in Knox TN Today. My reporting and commentary have also appeared in other outlets including; Governing, The Arizona Capitol Times, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Police1, among other state and regional outlets.

When Ashley Cantrell turned herself in to the Murray County Jail in Georgia, she had spent approximately three months avoiding arrest. She was tired of looking over her shoulder, tired of wondering when the police would catch up with her, and increasingly tired of the life she was living.

She served 15 days in jail for what she recalled as a probation violation. During that time, a group of women visited the jail to talk about Jesus Christ. Something about their presence and the way they spoke caught her attention.

“Man, I want what they have,” Cantrell remembered thinking.

She accepted Jesus Christ into her life during that incarceration. But when she was released, she returned to the same environment and continued using drugs for approximately another year.

That part of her story deserves attention because it challenges one of the assumptions people sometimes make about addiction, faith, and recovery.

Recognizing that your life needs to change is not always the same as knowing how to change it.

For Cantrell, the decision to pursue something better came before she had the circumstances, support, and stability to make that decision a lasting reality.

When addiction becomes normal

Cantrell first experimented with methamphetamine when she was approximately 14 years old, around 2000. At the time, she described it as something she did with friends.

It was not initially something she recognized as the beginning of a long struggle.

She also grew up in a family where drug use was familiar. During our conversation, Cantrell explained that she had used drugs with her parents when she was a teenager.

That detail helps explain the environment in which her addiction developed.

When drug use becomes part of someone’s home life, the distinction between normal behavior and dangerous behavior can become difficult to recognize, particularly for a child.

Cantrell had already begun engaging in theft as a young student, stealing items from school lockers. As she grew older, those behaviors became more serious, and methamphetamine increasingly became part of her daily life.

She also described experiencing periods of depression in which she would sleep for 15 to 20 hours a day. Methamphetamine became a way to stay awake, although its use ultimately contributed to a much larger pattern of instability.

She became a mother at 20 and continued working while using drugs. From the outside, she believed many people could not tell she was using methamphetamine.

But maintaining employment or appearing functional does not necessarily mean an addiction is under control.

By approximately age 23, Cantrell had begun injecting methamphetamine. During one particularly difficult period, while her son was spending the summer with her brother and grandfather, her behavior deteriorated.

She described breaking into homes, stealing, and exchanging sex for money to obtain drugs.

Those decisions carried consequences for other people as well as herself. Cantrell does not attempt to hide that part of her history.

She also encountered the criminal justice system repeatedly, including arrests and periods of probation.

Her experience illustrates something important about addiction: a person can recognize that their behavior is destructive and still struggle to separate themselves from it.

When the lifestyle becomes the prison

After years of methamphetamine use, Cantrell began questioning the life that had become familiar to her.

She recalled sitting with people who were using drugs and wondering why they were spending their time doing something that no longer brought her any satisfaction.

She even remembered dumping methamphetamine onto the floor and telling others that she no longer cared about it.

But she kept returning.

It was not simply a matter of wanting another high. The people she knew, the places she visited, and the routines she followed were closely connected to her addiction.

Eventually, even the prospect of continuing that lifestyle became exhausting.

When she finally turned herself in to the authorities, she was not describing a moment of sudden happiness or confidence. She was describing exhaustion.

She wanted something different, even if she was not yet sure how to obtain it.

Her time in jail brought her into contact with women who shared their Christian faith. Their example offered something she believed was missing from her own life.

But after she was released, she continued to struggle.

That does not necessarily mean her faith was insincere. It means the circumstances that had shaped years of addiction were still present.

The importance of changing your surroundings

One of the most significant moments in Cantrell’s story did not involve an arrest, a courtroom, or a dramatic spiritual experience.

It involved a family member offering her a place to live.

Cantrell explained that someone in her family invited her to move in once that relative had a home of her own. She accepted the opportunity and eventually moved away from the community where she had spent much of her life.

She changed counties, distanced herself from people she associated with drug use, and began rebuilding her routines.

According to Cantrell, that move was a turning point in her recovery.

At the time of our September 2026 interview, she reported approximately 10 years without methamphetamine.

She also described having stopped using marijuana several years earlier and more recently giving up alcohol.

What stands out is how much her recovery depended on changing the daily circumstances of her life.

As a retired detective, I have seen the importance of understanding what happens to people after they leave a jail, complete a program, or decide they want to stop using drugs.

A person can make a sincere commitment to recovery while still returning to a household where drugs are readily available, relationships are unstable, and the same pressures remain.

Personal responsibility is essential, but access to safer housing, healthier relationships, and a supportive community can make it far more practical to act on that responsibility.

Cantrell’s story does not establish that changing environments will work for everyone. Addiction and recovery are more complicated than any single intervention.

But her experience makes the importance of those circumstances difficult to ignore.

Faith became more than a moment

Cantrell’s Christian faith remained central to her life after she left the environment where she had been using drugs.

She described eventually feeling called to be baptized, becoming involved in a local church, and developing a deeper relationship with God.

She also acknowledged that her spiritual growth took time.

Attending church, reading the Bible, and learning to apply her beliefs to everyday decisions were not things she mastered immediately.

Her understanding of faith developed alongside her recovery.

During our conversation, Cantrell described how the people in her church supported her as she worked through painful experiences from her past.

For her, Christianity became something more than the decision she made while sitting in a jail cell.

It became part of how she understood her identity, her responsibilities, and the future she wanted.

That progression is important.

Faith did not remove her need to make difficult decisions. It helped give those decisions meaning.

She still had to change her habits, distance herself from destructive relationships, maintain employment, and take responsibility for her life.

What she describes is not an effortless transformation, but a relationship with Christ that has continued to develop through those choices.

The life she is building today

When I asked Cantrell about her life today, the conversation moved away from the drugs, arrests, and instability of her past.

That was intentional.

I am interested in what people have overcome, but I am equally interested in what they are doing with the opportunities they have now.

Cantrell works for a school system, cleaning and helping maintain a high school. She also cleans houses on weekends and has b…

What should a second chance ask of someone—and what should it make possible?

Aaron Kinzel joins Brandon Burley for a conversation that holds responsibility and rehabilitation together. Kinzel recounts serious harm in his past, the years he spent incarcerated, and the education and relationships that helped him build a different life. He does not present that history as something a degree erases.

Instead, the conversation asks what communities gain when people leaving prison have the preparation, support, and accountability to become good neighbors.

Taking responsibility without giving up on change

Kinzel describes growing up around violence and incarceration across generations of his family. Those experiences are part of his explanation of how he understood the world as a young person. They are not a claim that the harm he caused did not matter.

Brandon and Aaron return repeatedly to that distinction. Understanding how someone arrived at a destructive decision can help us think about prevention. It does not require denying the people who were put at risk.

The people who saw another possibility

Education gave Kinzel a direction to pursue. Mentorship helped turn that direction into something he could act on. He speaks about people inside the prison system—including correctional staff—who challenged him, took him seriously, and helped him imagine a future beyond the identity attached to his record.

Those relationships also complicated a simple “us versus them” view of the justice system. He describes continuing conversations with people in law enforcement, corrections, and public administration, and learning from people whose backgrounds differed sharply from his own.

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For readers who want to keep thinking about reentry and public safety, explore Brandon Burley’s Reducing Recidivism: A Comprehensive Guide. The ebook is available through The Redemption Project shop. This is an advertisement for our own book, separate from the guest’s views.

A public-safety question

One of Brandon’s central questions is why someone who primarily cares about victims and public safety should care about education in prison. Kinzel answers by asking listeners to think about who eventually comes home—and what that person has had an opportunity to learn before returning.

The conversation extends beyond one person. Family relationships, employment, community participation, and the example set for children all enter the discussion. Kinzel’s own account connects the opportunity he received with an obligation to contribute.

Where they agree—and where they differ

This is not a conversation in which every question lands on a tidy consensus. Aaron and Brandon discuss forgiveness, responsibility, repeated chances, and the limits of what anyone can do for a person who is not ready to change. Their exchange leaves room for disagreement while continuing to ask what makes a community safer.

In this episode

* Aaron’s account of incarceration, responsibility, and change.

* Education and mentorship inside prison.

* Building relationships across the justice system.

* Connecting reentry opportunities with public safety.

* Why a record should not be the whole story of a life.

Recorded September 28, 2026. Content note: Includes descriptions of violence, incarceration, and adult language. Personal recollections and opinions are presented as the speakers’ accounts.

What would you want a person returning to your neighborhood to have learned—and what opportunity would you be willing to help create?

I am a retired detective and criminal justice / government educator based in Tennessee. I founded The Redemption Project, as a place to focus on civics, rebuild non-partisan trust, and provide educational and emotional grace while learning about the news. I also have a column in Knox TN Today. My reporting and commentary have also appeared in other outlets including; Governing, The Arizona Capitol Times, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Police1, among other state and regional outlets.

She had survived an overdose. She was still weak after a severe health crisis. In our conversation, she described leaning against the hospital building, uncertain what would happen next.

Then her papaw arrived.

She had not known he was coming. She also knew she had hurt him, just as she had hurt other people who loved her. He came anyway.

He offered her a place to recover. There would be meals, prayer and someone who wanted her to live. There would also be rules.

“He showed up for me with open arms, with rules,” she said.

That is where Scarlett places a turning point in her story. What followed took months of care and years of work.

Before the crisis

Scarlett describes herself as a quiet student who played sports and earned good grades. She married young, became a mother and bought a home. Addiction was not the future she imagined.

After her second daughter was born, she developed persistent stomach problems. She says a long search for answers eventually led to a Crohn’s disease diagnosis and, late in 2017, a referral to a pain clinic.

At the same time, her marriage was struggling and she was grieving a family death. She began misusing prescribed pain medication, then sought pills elsewhere. Her account describes a progression to heroin and five years in active addiction.

The consequences reached her children. She signed emergency custody over to her mother. The home was sold. Relationships deteriorated. She made several attempts at rehabilitation, but recovery did not hold.

Scarlett does not leave those losses out of her testimony. Rebuilding the relationships would eventually require facing what had happened to them.

Surviving did not settle everything

By the summer of 2022, Scarlett says she was severely underweight and had lost the ability to walk. Her account includes bowel blockages, hospital stays, malnutrition and being told she might die.

Her thoughts turned to her daughters. She wanted them to know she loved them. She also wanted them to understand that her addiction was not their fault.

Even after that health crisis, she returned to heroin and overdosed. She describes emergency treatment and another hospital discharge before the moment her grandfather came to get her.

The danger had been real. So had the difficulty of changing. Her story does not become understandable by assuming that one frightening experience should have made everything easy afterward.

A home with boundaries

At her papaw’s house, care became practical.

He cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner. He prayed for her. Phone access was limited. There were expectations about staying at the house and following its routines. She had to make her bed.

Scarlett says she was angry about the restrictions at first. Looking back, she describes his help as the best thing that happened to her.

Faith also became personal in a different way. She had grown up in church, but remembers kneeling beside the bed when her stomach problems returned and praying:

“Lord, I’m gonna do it your way, ’cause my way’s killing me.”

This time, she called her father for help. He took her to the hospital. She says she was admitted and underwent surgery for a bowel blockage. Her mother and other relatives came to see her.

Afterward, she returned to her grandfather’s home to recover. She began walking better and noticing ordinary changes in herself: wanting to wash dishes, pick up after herself and participate in daily life.

Her account holds faith and practical care together. It includes medical treatment, a stable place to recover and therapy she began while living with her papaw. She continued therapy for roughly two and a half years.

Learning to be present again

After about four months, Scarlett wanted to move back into her mother’s home, where her children were living.

“I’m ready to be a mom again,” she remembers saying.

Being under the same roof brought joy. It also exposed how much she had missed. She did not know the everyday details of her daughters’ lives, including their favorite foods.

Being home was a beginning. It did not automatically restore trust.

“Trust isn’t, it’s not built back overnight,” she said.

That part of the story matters. A family can welcome someone back and still need time. A parent can be committed to recovery and still have relationships to repair. Scarlett describes trying, continuing therapy and learning how to be present.

Four years later

Scarlett celebrated four years sober in July 2026. She says she now has full custody of her children and works full time for an employer she had worked for before addiction.

She is also sharing her experience in jails, recovery settings and schools. Returning to Clinton High School, where she graduated, was especially meaningful. She has spoken at Susannah’s House in Knoxville, where the presence of mothers and their children connected closely with her own experience.

Her life is still being built. She talks about wanting a place of her own and the cost of getting there. Four years sober does not mean every difficulty has disappeared.

It means the story continued.

When her grandfather arrived outside that hospital, he could offer a home and his presence. Scarlett would still have to take part in the work that followed. Today, she can tell other people what that work made possible: being a mother again, returning to employment and finding a purpose in sharing her experience.

The woman who once stood outside with nowhere to go is now standing in front of other people, telling them there can be a way forward.

Hear Scarlett’s full conversation

Scarlett’s full conversation is now available as Season 2, Episode 30 of The Redemption Project Podcast. Watch or listen on this page, or listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/redemption-story-of-the-week-scarlett-her-papaw/id1864236260?i=1000798977149

Subscribe to The Redemption Project Newsroom on Substack for automatic updates when new stories and episodes are published.

This story is based on Scarlett’s account in her interview with Brandon Burley. Her medical history and recovery experiences are presented as she described them.

The Redemption Project Newsroom is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I am a retired detective and criminal justice / government educator based in Tennessee. I founded The Redemption Project, as a place to focus on civics, rebuild non-partisan trust, and provide educational and emotional grace while learning about the news. I also have a column in Knox TN Today. My reporting and commentary have also appeared in other outlets including; Governing, The Arizona Capitol Times, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Police1, among other state and regional outlets.

Baba had no idea that renting an apartment for a few days would change the direction of his life.

In 2021, he needed to conduct business in another part of Lagos, Nigeria. Rather than travel back and forth across the city, he arranged a short stay in an Airbnb-style apartment.

It was an ordinary decision.

He completed his stay and left.

According to Baba, a murder occurred in the neighboring apartment a day or two later. He says he did not know the victim, had never met him and had no connection to the crime.

But the victim was reportedly the owner of a media company, and the killing attracted significant attention.

Within weeks, Baba found himself at the center of a criminal investigation he says he had nothing to do with.

What followed would leave him fearing for his life, confronting his understanding of faith and eventually writing a book with a title that captures how he came to interpret the experience:

How God Arrested Me.

When I spoke with Baba on The Redemption Project Podcast, I expected to hear the story of a man who said he had been falsely accused of murder.

That is part of his story.

But he was far more interested in telling me what happened inside him while he waited for freedom.

An Arrest Without Answers

Baba grew up in a relatively comfortable Nigerian family. He received much of his education in the United Kingdom, attending school in Scotland and studying at universities in Hull and Edinburgh.

He had opportunities, education and family connections.

He was accustomed to navigating the world with some measure of security.

Then, one evening in Lagos, that security disappeared.

About two or three weeks after the murder, Baba says he stepped outside his home in a gated residential estate to take a walk and use his phone.

Two men approached him.

They had a photograph.

They appeared to recognize his face, although Baba says they initially had the wrong first name.

Before he could understand what was happening, he was forced to the ground and handcuffed.

Residents and security personnel challenged the men. According to Baba, weapons were produced, and the crowd backed away.

In the confusion, he managed to pass his phone to a resident, who contacted his girlfriend and father.

That may have been one of the most important things he did that evening.

At least someone knew he had been taken.

Baba says the men did not initially tell him why he was being arrested. They placed him inside a vehicle with darkened windows and drove away.

He feared he was being kidnapped.

Nigeria has experienced serious problems involving kidnapping and ransom demands, and Baba says he had no immediate way to distinguish what was happening to him from the stories he had heard.

He began pleading for his life.

He even offered money.

Only after arriving at a police station did he learn that the authorities were questioning him about a murder.

Investigators showed him a news clipping concerning the killing.

The location was familiar.

It was the apartment building where he had stayed.

Suddenly, an ordinary lodging decision had become the apparent connection between Baba and a homicide investigation.

He asked for a lawyer and resisted pressure, as he describes it, to provide a written statement without legal counsel.

Then he was locked up.

The First Night

Baba’s description of his first night in detention was difficult to hear.

He recalled entering a crowded room where people were sleeping on top of one another.

There was little space.

Rats moved through the area.

The smell of urine and human waste filled the room.

He said he spent much of that first night standing against a wall, unable to sleep, trying to understand how his life had reached this point.

This was not the life he recognized.

He had grown up with advantages.

He had studied abroad.

He had family members working to secure his release.

Now he was in a cell with people accused of serious crimes, uncertain about what would happen next.

He was also frightened by what he had heard about the treatment of detainees at the facility. In our conversation, Baba alleged that people could disappear from custody, particularly when no one outside knew where they were.

Those claims were part of his account and have not been independently established for this article.

But whether the danger he feared would actually materialize or not, his terror was real.

He did not know when he would leave.

He did not know what authorities would do.

And he did not know whether his family’s resources could protect him.

Then he began reading a Bible.

When Every Connection Seems Powerless

Baba had been a Christian long before his arrest.

He told me he committed his life to Christ when he was about 10 years old and had maintained some level of prayer and belief throughout his life.

But he made an important distinction.

He had known about God.

He had not always surrendered the direction of his life to God.

Inside the cell, those two realities began to collide.

He started reading the Psalms.

He reflected on the people he knew, the opportunities he had enjoyed and the influence his family might be able to exercise.

Yet he increasingly felt that none of those connections could determine when he would be released.

He described sensing a message in his heart: His release would happen in God’s time, not simply because he knew the right people.

He also believed he had a purpose inside the detention facility.

That was not the answer he wanted.

He wanted to go home.

He wanted the accusation resolved.

He wanted to return to the life he understood.

Instead, he began confronting something far more personal.

His pride.

His dependence on circumstances he thought he could control.

And his reluctance to surrender when the outcome was uncertain.

I have heard many stories of people encountering God during incarceration. Some were serving sentences for crimes they acknowledged committing. Others were struggling with circumstances they believed were unjust.

What interested me about Baba’s experience was that he did not describe his faith merely as a way of getting through the confinement.

He believed God was asking him to do something while he was there.

Worshipping Beside Men He Had Already Judged

At some point during his detention, Baba says he was moved from the severely overcrowded general holding area to a smaller section.

There, he encountered a Christian fellowship.

He described a system in which detainees’ names, numbers and alleged offenses were called aloud.

It meant he had some idea of what the men around him had been accused of doing.

One young man particularly disturbed him.

Baba recalled being told that the man had committed multiple killings.

Yet when Baba entered the fellowship, he saw that same man worshipping, praying and seeking God’s forgiveness.

He struggled with what he was witnessing.

How could someone accused of such terrible acts stand beside him and ask for the same mercy?

Was forgiveness really available to that man?

And if it was, what did that say about Baba’s own understanding of grace?

He began realizing that he was evaluating the people around him according to the crimes associated with their names.

He had placed himself in a different moral category.

He believed he was innocent of the charge against him, but he also recognized that innocence of a particular criminal accusation did not make him morally perfect.

The distinction changed his perspective.

Christianity teaches that human beings fall short of God’s standard and that grace is not earned through a comparison of who has committed the worst offense.

That does not eliminate accountability.

It does not erase the suffering of victims.

It does not make every act equally harmful.

But it does challenge the assumption that some people are beyond the reach of repentance and mercy.

Baba told me this encounter forced him to reconsider how he saw the men around him.

Rather than looking down on them, he began joining them in fellowship.

And soon, he would be asked to lead.

The Unexpected Prison Preacher

Baba had not entered detention intending to become a preacher.

He did not consider himself…

Men of Valor is not just a prison ministry.

It is a place where men coming out of incarceration are being challenged, discipled, restored and rebuilt.

In this special mash-up episode of The Redemption Project, Brandon Burley highlights voices from Men of Valor — men coming out of jail and prison, men who found faith behind the wall, and leaders helping them return to their families and communities with purpose.

This is a story about addiction, incarceration, faith, accountability, reentry and restoration.

But more than anything, this is a redemption story.

I am a retired detective and criminal justice / government educator based in Tennessee. I am a commentary write for Tennessee Lookout and a weekly columnist with Knox TN Today. My work examines public policy, public safety systems and civic responsibility. My reporting and commentary have also appeared in Governing, The Arizona Capitol Times, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Police1, among other state and regional outlets.

Mark David Grasso did not describe his childhood as the worst story anyone had ever heard.

That is part of what makes it important.

He grew up in a single-parent home. His mother struggled with mental health issues and physical limitations after being hit by a car. His older sisters moved out when he was young, leaving Mark and his mother together in a house where he often felt like the child and the counselor at the same time.

From the outside, things may have looked fine.

Behind closed doors, they were more complicated.

There were control issues. Criticism. Pressure. A picture the family wanted others to see and a reality that did not always match it.

Mark is careful not to exaggerate his childhood.

He was not starved.

He was not beaten.

He does not tell the story as if he had the worst upbringing imaginable.

But that is exactly why his point matters.

Trauma does not always arrive in the form people expect.

Sometimes people normalize it because it does not look extreme enough to count.

Sometimes a young person grows up carrying things he does not yet know how to name.

When Mark was 16, almost 17, he left home after his mother found him smoking cigarettes and told him either the cigarettes had to go or he did.

He was already looking for a reason to leave.

Then came freedom.

For the first time, Mark could make decisions for himself. He could wear what he wanted. Go where he wanted. Spend time with who he wanted.

But freedom without preparation can become its own danger.

Mark had been controlled, but he had not been taught consequences.

He had been protected from decisions, but not prepared to make them.

Soon he was hanging out with older cousins, going to parties, smoking weed and experimenting with pills. The OxyContin wave was moving through his world. What began as occasional use became something more serious.

Then he joined a gang.

There, he found something he had been missing.

Acceptance.

Camaraderie.

A sense of worth.

A place to belong.

That belonging came with a cost.

Mark started selling drugs. He started selling heroin. By 18, he had graduated high school, had his own apartment, had two cars and was making more money than he knew what to do with.

At that age, he thought he had everything figured out.

Then came the fall.

Literally.

Mark was helping a neighbor put a roof on a house when it started raining. A tarp became slick. An air hose he had wrapped around the chimney was moved. Mark fell from the roof and was knocked unconscious.

The next day, the pain came.

People around him told him which doctor to see. The doctor prescribed him the same kind of pills Mark had already been around in the drug world. At first, Mark saw the medication as something that could help the pain and maybe even make him money.

Then he became physically dependent.

When that doctor was arrested for overprescribing, Mark’s supply ran out.

Withdrawal came hard.

A cousin told him heroin was the same thing.

Mark resisted.

Then he used.

And when he did, the sickness and fear melted away.

That moment changed everything.

Very quickly, the apartment, cars and money disappeared. He went from selling drugs to stealing roofing guns from Home Depot. He tried rehab, but thought five days of detox would fix his life.

It did not.

Before his 19th birthday, Mark was arrested for selling narcotics.

He thought the system might help him.

Instead, he got a felony conviction and incarceration.

That became the pattern.

Get out.

Use again.

Violate.

Go back.

Get out again.

Sell drugs again.

Return to what he knew.

Again and again, Mark says he lived his life on the installment plan.

Each time he came home, he had no real foundation. No stable path. No strong social support. No job skills that could compete with the money he remembered from the drug trade. No real transition plan that helped him become someone different.

He could get a low-wage job.

He could sleep on a couch.

He could report to supervision.

He could pee in a cup.

But none of that changed the things that had shaped him.

So he returned to the same life.

For Mark, one of the most honest lines in the conversation is also one of the most important:

There was a point where he operated better in an institution than he did in the real world.

That is not an excuse.

It is an indictment of a system that often punishes people, releases them and then seems surprised when they return unchanged.

Mark eventually became conditioned to consequences.

Prison no longer shocked him.

He knew how to survive there. He knew how to fill out the paperwork. He knew the routines. He knew the rules. He knew the culture.

The boiling water did not scare him anymore because the temperature had risen slowly over time.

He was cooking himself to death.

Then the safety net disappeared.

His family reached a point where they told him, in effect, if he wanted to live that lifestyle, he could choose it, but they were not going to live it with him anymore.

No more money.

No more cards.

No more commissary.

No more cushion.

No more soft landing.

During his last incarceration, COVID hit. He was inside prison, isolated, cut off and facing a different kind of reality. He began to ask himself what he had to go home to.

The answer was almost nothing.

An ankle monitor.

A bar of Irish Spring.

That was about it.

That kind of emptiness can break a person.

For Mark, it helped wake him up.

He entered a recovery community program inside the Connecticut prison system called Tier 4. He had avoided it for years because of the stigma around it. People called it a snitch program. They said it was a setup for failure.

This time, he went anyway.

That decision changed the direction of his life.

The program was structured. It emphasized accountability, mindfulness and peer correction. At first, it did not look like freedom. It looked like rules.

But inside that structure, Mark found something he had not found in previous cycles.

A way forward.

A recovery coach from CCAR came into the prison. Mark listened and realized this might be work he could actually do. His criminal history and addiction history would not automatically disqualify him. In that field, lived experience could become part of the work.

That mattered.

A woman running the program, Morgan Cease, saw something in him. She allowed him to begin finding his way. Mark started facilitating groups. He and another incarcerated man created a six-week employment readiness program. They ran recovery meetings. He began to see himself in a different role.

Not as the addict.

Not as the dealer.

Not as the gang member.

Not as the inmate who knew how to survive prison better than freedom.

As someone who could help.

When Mark came home, he kept going.

He went through recovery coach training. While in a halfway house, he applied for jobs he did not technically have the credentials for. His resume looked strong because the experience was real, even if it had been gained inside prison.

In one interview, he told the truth.

He was on parole.

He was in a halfway house.

His experience came from prison.

This is what he had done.

This is what he wanted to do now.

The man interviewing him told Mark someone had once given him an opportunity, and now he was going to extend one to Mark.

That opportunity mattered.

Mark started by cleaning toilets and making beds at a treatment facility.

Within six months, he became facilities manager over six facilities.

From there, he kept moving forward.

Today, Mark is the program manager of the Family Reentry Recovery Community Center in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He helped open the center more than two years ago. The center works with people in recovery and reentry, helping them build plans around their goals, barriers, strengths, fears and next steps.

That is where Mark’s story becomes bigger than one man.

Because what he now knows from both sides of the system is simple:

People need to be met where they are.

Not where a program wishes they were.

Not where a court file reduces them.

Not where society assumes they should be by now.

Where they actually are.

Mark is clear that recovery does not look the same for everyone. What works for one p…

Tremaine Smith was 15 years old when one decision changed the rest of his life.

He had been a straight-A student. He played football and basketball. He had never been in trouble before. Then he went out one night with the wrong people, refused a plea deal and received two 40-year sentences.

He went into prison as a teenager.

He came home in 2023 after serving 31 years.

In this episode of The Redemption Project, Tremaine talks with Brandon Burley about growing up, juvenile sentencing, prison survival, violence behind the wall, becoming a certified law clerk, writing an 11-book series, building True Phoenix Media, starting over after incarceration and learning how to live free after spending nearly his whole life in prison.

This is a story about consequences.

It is also a story about resilience, redemption and what it means to rise from the ashes.

Derrick Westfield did not begin life with the story many people might expect.

He was not raised in a home without both parents.

He did not describe his childhood as a broken home.

His mother and father worked. His family was together. He had a nice childhood.

Then, when Derrick was 12 years old, his father died on his birthday.

That loss changed the shape of the family.

The structure began to loosen. The brothers began moving in different directions. Derrick found himself drawn more and more toward the neighborhood, toward the streets, toward the people and patterns that would eventually help define the next part of his life.

By 16, Derrick was carrying a gun.

Then a drug deal went wrong.

The result was a murder charge, an attempted murder charge and a prison sentence that would follow him for years.

Derrick was sentenced as an adult. He received 22 years for murder and eight years for attempted murder, with the sentences running together. He served 10 years, made parole in 2004, violated parole, returned to prison, got out again, violated again and eventually flattened that original sentence in 2011.

But prison did not immediately transform him.

In those early years, Derrick said prison was not filled with programs, school or structured rehabilitation the way people may imagine today.

“You just did time.”

That is one of the hard truths of this episode.

Prison can punish a person without changing him.

It can separate a man from society without giving him the tools, accountability, discipleship or structure needed to become someone different.

For Derrick, prison also became the place where gang identity became more official. The streets had already shaped him, but prison hardened the identity. He described those years simply: banging, smoking weed and doing time.

But even then, God was not absent.

Derrick can look back now and see moments when the Lord was knocking.

One of those moments came during a Christmas banquet inside the prison. A group from the outside came in. Derrick had a name tag on. Some women recognized his last name because they knew his mother.

One of them took him aside, grabbed his hand and began to pray.

Derrick was not spiritually grounded at that time. He was not walking with the Lord. But something about that prayer stayed with him.

The woman prayed about the love of money.

Later, Derrick opened a small Bible-like booklet and landed on Proverbs 13:11, a verse about wealth gained dishonestly diminishing.

That verse hit him because greed and the love of money were part of the bondage that had helped lead him into the life he was living.

He did not fully change in that moment.

That is important.

Sometimes a seed is planted long before the harvest shows up.

Derrick remembers the prayer more than the messenger. He does not remember the woman’s name. He does not remember her face. But more than two decades later, he remembers what happened when she prayed.

That was not the end of the story.

After Derrick came home, he went back to the life.

Not because he did not know better.

Because the old identity was still there.

The streets were still there.

The money was still there.

The temptation was still there.

And the lie was still there: this time, I can do it smarter.

That lie is not unique to Derrick.

It is one of the oldest traps in the world.

The belief that a person can return to the same destructive pattern but somehow control the ending this time.

Derrick could not.

During one parole violation, he went back to prison and encountered a man who called himself Brother Derrick. The man came in preaching and speaking about a life that lined up directly with Derrick’s own. He walked past other cells, came back to Derrick’s, tapped on the window and began speaking life over him.

Derrick saw that as another moment where God was reaching for him.

He began reading more. He started going to church. He watched sermons. Something was stirring.

But when he got out again, the old life pulled him back.

Then came another violent incident.

During a fight inside a home, Derrick ran through a painted-over glass door and severely cut his arm. He could see the bone. He had severed an artery. Blood was everywhere. When he reached the hospital, a doctor told him he may have had only about 90 seconds left.

Then the doctor told him something Derrick never forgot:

“Just change it.”

Derrick does not remember the doctor’s name.

He does not remember his face.

But he remembers the message.

Just change it.

He was taken from the hospital back to jail and eventually back to prison. This time, something began to deepen. Derrick started reading, writing poetry, journaling and praying. Other men noticed. They began asking questions. They began coming around him. A small Bible study began to form.

But when he got out, he was separated from that spiritual community.

One man told him, “When a banana gets separated from the bunch, it gets peeled.”

That is exactly how Derrick describes what happened.

He came home. He needed a job. He needed to catch up. He felt behind. And instead of staying rooted, he went back to selling drugs.

That led to another arrest.

This time, Derrick faced a new 12-year sentence at 100%.

Before prison, he spent about 10 months in county jail.

That is where the real transformation began.

He was placed in a cell where he could not see the television. He said he did not have a mat for two weeks. He did not have the basic items he expected. He was angry. He was frustrated. He was sitting at the bottom.

Then the breakdown came.

He thought about the time he was facing.

He thought about his daughter, who was still very young.

He thought about his life.

And then the tears came.

For weeks, Derrick said it felt like God was washing him clean. Memories came back. Things he had forgotten came to mind. He began repenting, not casually, but deeply.

He wanted something to read.

He prayed for something to read.

Then a man came through with a cart. He went to other cells. He started to leave. Then he looked around, came upstairs, tapped on Derrick’s window and held up a Bible.

Derrick still has that Bible.

When he opened it, he landed in Romans 8.

For the first time, he said, he understood what he was reading. It was not just words on a page. It was as if the Scripture was being opened to him.

From that moment on, he could not get enough.

He started another Bible group in jail. He prayed with other men. He made prayer lists. He began walking in a different identity.

And when he returned to prison, the first thing he felt God call him to do was let go of the old one.

He denounced the gang.

He told the men who knew him not to call him by that name anymore.

Just call me by my name.

That was not a small thing.

For years, that identity had shaped him. It had given him a place, a name, a code and a role. Letting it go could have made prison harder. It could have put him in danger.

And at one point, it almost did.

Derrick was called to the ballfield by someone with influence. Younger men were nearby. Derrick understood body language. He knew something was off.

But as he began explaining what God had done in his life, the conversation changed.

The man told him the others had been there to get him.

Then he said that was not going to happen.

Instead, he wanted to talk. He wanted to understand how Derrick had gotten free. He wanted to know how to let go.

That is redemption.

Not that the past disappeared.

Not that the harm was erased.

Not that consequences vanished.

But that the identity which once held Derrick began to lose its grip.

In Part I of this conversation, Derrick’s story moves through grief, violence, prison, gang life, parole violations, spiritual encounters, repentance, Romans 8 and the beginning of a new life.

The wound did not get the final word.

The charge did not get the final word.

The gang did not get the final word.

The sentence did not get the final word.

God was writing in places Derrick did not yet know how to read.

And by the time Derrick opened that Bible in a county jail cell, the story he thought was over was only beginning to change.

This is Derr…