Although prison and prisoners are not the subject of much polite thought in most developed countries, they get mentioned quite a bit in the New Testament, and a part of Jesus’s mission was “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners”. We tend to interpret this as referring to people who are imprisoned by sin or in some other spiritual sense, but the 13th chapter of the letter to the Hebrews seems to exhort us to show care for prisoners in a more literal sense:
Continue to show brotherly love. Do not forget to be hospitable to strangers. By doing this some people have unknowingly shown hospitality to angels. Remember people who are in prison, as if you were in prison with them, and remember people who are being persecuted, as if it was happening to you.
Somehow or other, Christianity has become a “respectable” faith, and it is no longer seemly for us to spend time visiting prisoners. Rather than empathising with them, as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews clearly instructs us to, many Christians are vocal in demanding longer sentences and harsher conditions for prisoners. The US, the most “Christian” developed country, has the highest incarceration rate in the world.