Families of incarcerated people carry a sentence nobody handed down to them: the shame, the cost, the visits, and the silence at church. Scripture has more to say about this than most congregations do, and a good deal of the New Testament was written by a man in custody.
What Scripture says about remembering prisoners
Remember those who are in bonds, as bound with them; and those who are ill-treated, since you are also in the body.
Hebrews 13:3 (WEB)
As bound with them. Not as a charity project — as though it were happening to you. Which is, of course, exactly what it feels like to the family.
Jesus puts prison visiting in a list of things done directly to him.
I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.’
Matthew 25:36 (WEB)
No qualifier about guilt or innocence. The instruction is to go.
Verses for the person inside
Bring my soul out of prison, that I may give thanks to your name. The righteous will surround me, for you will be good to me.
Psalm 142:7 (WEB)
Written from a cave rather than a cell, but it is the prayer of someone confined and it can be prayed as it stands.
And Paul, writing from custody, frames his situation without self-pity.
so that it became evident to the whole palace guard, and to all the rest, that my bonds are in Christ;
Philippians 1:13 (WEB)
Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians and Philemon were written from imprisonment. If your family member is trying to work out whether God can use a person from inside, that is the answer.
Verses for the family outside
Yahweh is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves those who have a crushed spirit.
Psalm 34:18 (WEB)
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Galatians 6:2 (WEB)
That second one is aimed at your church as much as at you. Families in this situation routinely go unsupported, not from unkindness but because nobody knows what to say and so says nothing.
The particular difficulties
Shame that is not yours. You did not do it, and you will still feel the room change when it comes up. That is a real cost and it deserves to be named rather than absorbed.
Complicated feelings about them. If they hurt someone, you may love them and be furious at them and grieve them all at once. If there were victims — sometimes within the family — this becomes much harder, and nobody should be pressured into a reconciliation timeline.
Financial and logistical strain. Phone charges, travel, commissary, lost income, and often the children left behind. This is one of the most practical needs a church can meet and one of the least often offered.
Explaining it to children. Age-appropriate honesty generally works better than a cover story, which children usually discover and which teaches them the subject is unspeakable.
Practical things that help
Write letters. Mail is the most valuable currency inside. Write about ordinary life — the weather, the dog, what happened at work. Not sermons, not updates on how much everyone is suffering.
Be reliable rather than intense. A short letter every week matters more than a long one occasionally. Predictability is scarce inside.
Find the prison chaplain. Most facilities have one, and many have volunteer programmes. They can often tell you what is genuinely useful.
Look for a family support group. Prison Fellowship and similar organizations run them. The isolation of this is severe, and other families in it are the fastest relief available.
Tell one person at church the truth. Most people do not, and then experience church as a place where they must perform. One honest conversation usually produces more support than expected.
Plan for release early. Housing, work, and identification are the practical determinants of whether someone stays out. That planning starts long before the date.
If you are unsure how much contact to have
You are allowed limits. If the relationship was harmful before, incarceration does not obligate you to resume it, and forgiveness — whatever you decide about it — is not the same as unlimited access.
Support and boundaries can coexist. Deciding what you can sustain, rather than what guilt demands, is what makes long-term contact possible at all.
The thing worth remembering
Hebrews assumes prisoners will be remembered by people who are free — and the whole logic of the verse is that the church is meant to carry part of this with you.
If nobody has offered, ask. Most people are waiting to be told what would help.