CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. — J. Allison DeFoor II had been meditative all morning — prayerful on his way to the Wakulla Correctional Institution, where he worships most Sundays; as he delivered communion; as he placed his right hand atop snowy-haired Ralph Matthews, a sex offender who would be freed in four days.

DeFoor uttered the blessing and challenge to Matthews, hopeful that the words would have legs, would become a shield against temptation and sin and bad decisions.

Gracious God, we thank you for the work and witness of your servant Ralph who has enriched this community and brought gladness to friends; now bless and preserve him at this time of transition.

For more than 20 years, DeFoor was a soldier for justice in South Florida, putting more people than he can count behind bars before he found a higher calling — to offer the word of God to prisoners.

"You just hope that in some way they leave different than when they arrived," DeFoor says the next day over tea at his law office, 17 miles away in Tallahassee.

Over the years, DeFoor has served as an assistant public defender, prosecutor, county and circuit judge, maverick sheriff, reelection running mate of Gov. Bob Martinez. For a time, he was Gov. Jeb Bush's Everglades czar.

DeFoor played gamely throughout his public career, all the while struggling to decipher where, precisely, God fit into his life.

He found his answer in the Episcopalian priesthood, as a volunteer ministering at a state prison almost 700 miles from Key West, where he had built a storied career.

"For years, the feeling would hit me, and I would stuff it right back down in my gut," says DeFoor, 54, who is also state coordinator for an environmental-restoration consulting firm. "I finally stopped running."

Now, he is among the most fervent supporters of the faith- and character-based prison movement stirring across the country. Followers of the religious and secular initiative work to reduce disciplinary infractions among inmates and recidivism among parolees.

At least 10 states now offer faith-based prison dorms. Already, the Florida Department of Corrections has converted three prisons into faith-based institutions — two for men, one for women. And if the well-connected DeFoor has his way, a $75 million annex under construction at Wakulla would become the fourth.

Supporters of faith programming say inmates at the three prisons committed almost a third fewer infractions than those in nonfaith institutions. At Wakulla, where the program was launched in 2005, the recidivism rate hovers at 7 percent, compared with 33 percent at other prisons.

Skeptics argue that participants in these programs are already primed to succeed, that their rehabilitation is mostly a function of character and maturity.

"There's also a concern that if you have all the good eggs in one facility, you diminish the positive influence they could have on other inmates if they were in another prison," says Daniel Mears, a Florida State University professor of criminology.

A year ago this month, DeFoor was ordained where he now prays and preaches. He committed to the priesthood in front of 100 family members and friends and felons in a squat cinder-block building on the sprawling prison campus.

"Allison was open enough to allow himself to grow in his faith," Bishop Leo Frade of the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida, who ordained DeFoor, said in an interview from Honduras. "We have a gift in Allison, someone committed to our prison populations."

Today, DeFoor ministers inside the medium-security complex cut off from the world by rolling barbed wire, dense patches of wood and a single winding road. Here, where 1,333 men serve time for crimes ranging from traffic offenses to murder, DeFoor is Father Allison, the soft-spoken, quick-witted guy who comes to prison in Tommy Bahama collared shirts.

At today's service, 16 men of various faiths gather in the honey-colored pews of a chapel adjacent to the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Because no one has money for tithes, the inmates are given Post-it notes. Before services are over, they will write down something they want to offer to God — sometimes admission of an addiction, sometimes a promise, often a fear.

It was DeFoor who persuaded Gov. Bush, a longtime friend, to offer religious teaching, academics and life-skills training at Wakulla. The faith is multi; the character is secular.

Horizons Communities in Prisons, a nonprofit whose mission is "to prepare prisoners to live responsibly with others," runs the program at Wakulla. Subjects include family relations, improving credit history and financial literacy.

One Monday afternoon, a dozen inmates attend a small business class, where they learn about equipment leasing vs. purchasing, niche marketing, networking and copyright laws.

"I have been to jail a few times and have never had the opportunity to learn stuff like this," says Ernest Gordon, serving time for burglary.

Gordon, 38, plans to open a tree-cutting business in Ocala after he is released. "This whole program is great, because it makes you feel as if you are finally doing something right," he says.