The Discipleship House, a two-story brick building on Fillmore, had no room for Donovan Sanders when he moved in last year. So he slept on the floor. Donovan knew he needed the shelter. He appreciated the community and the fellowship of Larry Hope, a Breaking Ground staffer who had moved in about a month before him. There was no way he wanted to go back to the prisons where he had spent...

Antwan Candler keeps a printout of his prison record in the bag he carries to work every day at Breaking Ground in North Lawndale. In his prison photo, a 21-year-old young man stares out, his eyes dull and vacant, a little scruff on his chin.  Antwan’s vitals are there—born January 1984, brown eyes, 5 feet, 9 inches tall—and below that, the details of a life he once lived: criminal drug...