Roland Martin and Richelle Carey are two of my favorite faces on CNN. Both of them should have their own shows. The reason I'd love for them to have their own shows is because they have a heart and conscience when it comes to showing us the things that we need to see. One example of such a story is the Prison Initiative created by Rev. T.D. Jakes.

With the Prison Initiative, ex-offenders are given opportunities to improve their lives, but they are expected to pursue a difficult and rigorous year-long program to get themselves ready for society. According to Jakes, the program is not easy:

"It's a tough program with very stringent requirements. They go through the program for about a a year with a limited amount of absences allowed. They have to be very aggressive and very assertive and comply with the requirements of the program in order to participate. That's what makes the participants so proud because it is not easily given to them."

Jakes pushes them to get educated and re-empowered to be successful in the world, after dealing with the trauma of serving time in prison.

I absolutely love what Pastor Jakes is doing. The spirit of men like him and Jeremiah Wright represent the future of the black church, as both men have a fearless commitment toward going out in to the world and addressing realistic issues. Somehow, we forget that the legacy of Jesus, who would call for men of God to do God's work wherever it lies. As Pastor Jakes said during the interview, "We are in the trenches," that's where we all need to be when it comes to solving problems in our communities. Pastor Jakes adds:

"If we don't develop programs and create opportunities for them [inmates] to have housing and job opportuniies, we are going to build higher and higher walls around our homes and then you have to ask yourself, who's really incarcerated, the person who is an ex-offender or those of us who will not reach out our hands to rehabilitate them."

As you can see in the above video, Pastor Jakes tops off his program with an all-out graduation. For him, celebrating the accomplishments of the former inmates is key:

"Often these are people who have never been celebrated in their lives. For the first time they've accomplished something. I thought it was imperative that we use our platform to really make them feel special and to honor them and empower them. It was a stellar moment for the graduates to understand that they can be received back in to the community. That they can fit again."

Attorney General Eric Holder has the difficult and critically important task of helping us to re-evaluate our prison system from the bottom up. We must wonder why some of our most valuable American assets are wasting away in America's penitentiaries, with little effort to rehabilitate the individuals within the system. Our neglect of prison inmates affects the stability of our society and family structure, especially in the African-American community. Anyone who has any belief in family values will support prison reform.

In the meantime, those affected by the prison system have to find a way to survive. I recommend learning entrepreneurship as a path to create jobs where there are none. A quick boot camp on how to start a business can go a long way. Also, extra education never hurts. I saw one of my best friends in college, who served 10 years in prison before going back to school, emerge as the No. 2 African-American graduate at The University of Kentucky. He then went on to study law and created the kind of life he and his family deserved. He wasn't allowed to practice law because of his felony conviction, but his knowledge of the very system that helped to destroy his life gave him a broader perspective on how our world works. He was able to help quite a few people with his knowledge.

I recommend that Pastor Jakes expand his program. I also hope that other pastors around America will follow his lead. When you break it all down, we need the church to sustain us, for it represents the strongest institution in black America.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.