MONROE — A metal door slammed behind her.

Carly Higgins waited in a chamber for another door to open, clearing the way for her to enter prison.

It would be her first time behind bars. She was nervous.

Wearing black slacks and a green dress shirt, the slender 20-year-old wanted to minister to rapists and child molesters. She came to Monroe all the way from California last week for the opportunity.

Twenty other college students from towns across the country also came. As students throughout the Puget Sound region leave for mission trips, Higgins and others landed here.

They each paid $2,300 to give out sack lunches to homeless people in Seattle, go on police ride-alongs and tour the Twin Rivers sex offender unit at the Monroe Correctional Complex as missionaries for Campus Crusade for Christ, an evangelical organization.

“I think my Christian faith is the most important thing I can offer,” Higgins said, waiting to enter the prison Tuesday. “I hope to give them hope. I know a lot of them are here for life and it seems pretty hopeless, but there is hope for some kind of saving grace.”

Most of the students had never met a sex offender. Though some studied them in college criminology and psychology courses, many based their image of sex offenders on movies and cop shows.

“I thought prisons were where all the bad guys go — and they just stay bad,” said James Dieffenderfer, an incoming junior at North Carolina State University.

Like the others, he was impressed by the intensive treatment sex offenders can volunteer for at the Twin Rivers unit. Once admitted to the program, prisoners go through classes that involve group therapy, presentations from victims and arousal retraining. Less than 7 percent of the men who complete the program return to prison for another sex crime, according to the Department of Corrections.

On Tuesday, the students walked down rows of segregation cells no longer in use. Each cell was barren except for a set of bunk beds with a ladder, a small metal toilet and a sink in the corner.

“It looks like my dorm room, just without the toilet,” said Kristy Nelson, a student at North Dakota State University at Fargo. “I didn’t even have a sink. I didn’t even have a ladder.”

Higgins, a junior at California State University, Chico, walked into an empty cell. The metal door slammed shut in unison with the others in the block.

“That’s loud,” she exclaimed. “I bet they don’t like that. Dang! I would feel … Hopefully none of them are claustrophobic.”

Like the rest of the summer program outings, the prison tour is supposed to give students a feel for urban problems. Campus Crusade for Christ leader Tom Durrant hopes the experience will help them be more aware and effective ministers when they’re older. If they choose to minister in prisons, they’ll have a better understanding of what life in prison is like and what inmates’ needs are, he said.

“The main objective is to give these students a taste of inner-city life and inner-city ministry,” said Durrant, who has been running the Seattle program for six years. “The main reason we hook up with the DOC is the DOC will provide a real thorough and healthy view of what can and does happen in inner-city situations.”

The students stay in dormitories at Seattle Pacific University and are given whistles to blow in case they encounter danger. The four-week mission trip culminates with several visits to the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor. There, students are encouraged to meet one-on-one with inmates to share scriptures and help spread their faith. The students are enthusiastic about the experience, but Durrant concedes they usually take more from the prayer sessions than the inmates do. It’s difficult for young college students to relate to and really change hearts in prisons and homeless shelters, he said.

Tuesday’s outing ended with a tour of the minimum security unit at the Monroe prison. There, inmates are given more freedom to walk through the complex. They can play baseball and throw horseshoes.

As the Campus Crusade for Christ students — 19 young women and two men — walked by, inmates’ heads turned. Several whistled and a few shouted suggestive comments at the group.

That was the extent of the contact between the students and the inmates. Higgins was disappointed she didn’t get a chance to converse and pray with the criminals.

“It’s so different than I thought,” she said, as she passed inmates on a sidewalk in the prison yard. “My vision of prison was gray walls and bars and (inmates) being by themselves, but now I know they have so many options.”

Her first day at prison, she said, made her more prepared for her next experience behind bars.

Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.