Numerous are the reports of hardened criminals behind bars who claim to have found a "new life in Jesus" involving substantial changes in attitudes and behaviours, changes in beliefs and goals, and changes self-understanding and destination. How genuine are such conversions? Finding God might be a convenient way to impress parole boards and judges! In order to find out, we first need to understand what a religious conversion is. Sociological accounts of religious conversion (a radical change of group adherence), as well as (socio-)psychological accounts (reconfigurations of one's self-narrative as an effective coping strategy) provide self-evident immanent construals of the phenomenon, given what Charles Taylor describes as the "modern social imaginary" that precludes transcendence. I will argue that such construals are problematic because the event and process of religious conversion cannot be clearly delineated and fully understood without reference to an encounter with a transcendent reality. In addition, I wonder whether Taylor's own 'poetico-performative' view on religious (re)conversions can make room for the reality of the presence of God as witnessed by jail cell converts.