The criminal justice system in the United States has recently come under intense scrutiny. To understand and critique the system it is important to understand the broader history and processes within the system. Looking specifically at the practice of juvenile detention, we see how the system developed parallel to the cruel practices applied to adults as punishment. Juvenile detention centers were modeled on adult prisons, both reflecting nineteenth-century ideas of redemptive suffering. The consistently coercive and oppressive features of the juvenile justice system also become apparent, when looking at the system through a historic lens. In contemporary juvenile detention centers, remnants of religious influence remain in the form of prison ministry programs. Throughout an examination of the historic and modern influence of evangelical Protestantism in prisons, the vulnerability of the individuals in these programs become apparent, as do the inequities within the system.