On the edge of downtown Austin, Texas, The Sobering Center occupies the first and second floors of a blocky building with cameras above the entrances. Ambulances pull up to the front, and police enter through the side.

Just past the lobby, the center’s paramedics evaluate intoxicated clients in a lab before admitting them to one of the single-sex dorms—large rooms with 24 green cots for clients to sleep in until they are sober. Behind a one-way mirror, a paramedic observes and types notes.

Iran let about 54,000 prisoners out of jail on furlough to curtail the spread of the coronavirus in cramped detention quarters. Relatives of inmates at Evin prison, notorious for holding activists, Christians, and foreign nationals, said the facility had run out of medicine, cleaning products, and hygiene items.

On Jan. 8, 2019, Desmond Meade registered to vote in Orlando, Fla., with his wife by his side and photographers capturing the moment. Meade spent several years in prison about two decades ago on felony drug and weapon charges. Now he serves as president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), which successfully pushed for a state constitutional amendment that restored the voting rights to ex-felons who had completed their sentences.

The Sacred Heart Community Clinic in Round Rock, Texas, had 6,300 visits last year, all of them from low-income, uninsured patients. Liz Burton-Garcia started the clinic nearly 10 years ago on the campus of St. William Catholic Church, where she is a member. Her sales background helped her drum up local support: Doctors donated their time, construction companies donated materials, and many others offered money and prayer.

After entering the foster care system in Arizona at 2 years old, Anthony Harper bounced from house to house until age 18, when he landed on his own without a home. Harper lived on the streets or moved between friends’ houses for several months, struggling with health problems and mental issues. In September 2019, he called Steve and Teri Vogel at Thrive.

Janice Wilkens received an upsetting call from her son on Jan. 2. “He was devastated, and he was nervous,” she told WMC-TV in Memphis, Tenn. “He wanted help right away.” Her son, 36-year-old Denorris Howell, was an inmate at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, Miss., in the notorious Unit 29, where prison officials reported major disturbances due to gang violence.

As WORLD’s Effective Compassion podcast continues in its weekly installments, I’d like to take us back 20 years to a time when “compassionate conservatism” was getting huge attention due to presidential candidate George W. Bush’s embrace of it, but widespread confusion remained about what this new idea was all about.