Good Lookin' Out

Prison bites. Chaplain Christine Marallen can't wait to get there some days.

The United States criminal justice system has massive fan follows in our culture. The millions of men and women who traverse the hallways of our jails and prisons invite curiosity, and mass incarceration is big money-with unusual bedfellows juggling both the blame and the solutions.

While legislators and glam celebrities arm wrestle for headlines and tax dollars, Chaplain Christine Marallen convinces gang members not to off each other on the recreation yard. She teaches men how to forgive themselves for their blackout meth benders, and walks alongside women who regret selling their children's futures to keep a man around. Inside three state prisons in Southwest Ohio, Marallen unravels her own strongholds and blind spots while clarifying prison truth with a larger Truth-such as, "despite the prison hierarchy, selling the sexual favors of a cellie to pay a debt does not square with divine justice."

Good Lookin' Out (prison slang for 'strong work, thanks') captures the boots-on-the-ground reality of what's possible with incarceration, restoration, and redemption, told through the individuals and stories Marallen encounters as a prison chaplain and criminal justice college instructor.

Marallen has spent time with the incarcerated since 2002, trading a successful corporate career for the wooden pews of the prison chapel. Over the last two decades, she has been the ear and the voice for thousands of individuals inside the criminal justice system, writing and facilitating programming for men and women of all faith backgrounds and security levels. Her curriculum on trauma, personal development, and post-release life planning have been offered in treatment facilities, jails, and maximum-security prisons.

Currently, Marallen is the Chief Strategy Officer for Damascus, a nonprofit reentry organization she co-founded in 2015 in Cincinnati. She is the former director of prison ministries for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and past president of the American Catholic Correctional Chaplains Association. Christine holds an M.S. Criminal Justice and M.A. Theology from Xavier University, and is a trauma-informed professional, trained in the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM).

Good Lookin' Out is Marallen's first book on the topics of incarceration and ministry.