Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Prisoner Reentry

This is one of the most serious social problems our country faces today, as over 7 million people are under some form of criminal justice supervision, over 2 million are in prison, and 650,000 are released from prison annually, with approximately 70% of them returning to crime and prison.

The social reentry process has been a failure for generations, being a large contributor to existing crime rates, and public leadership still struggles to find some effective way to deal with it.

The solution the LampStand Foundation has developed to address this is to look for leadership from the 30% of those who have managed to reform their lives and want to help other criminals reform theirs, and inspire them to seek graduate education, professional training, and deep study of the social teaching of the Catholic Church, which is a significant tool that can be used for the transformation of criminals.

Just as it is true that it often takes a thief to catch a thief, it might also be true that it takes a reformed criminal to reform criminals.

The new prisoner reentry website developed by the White House Faith Based Initiative is a wealth of information.