April 21, 2024
The effort is so successful that we are contacted weekly for more van transportation help.Yet with some funding at an end, and the need continuing to grow, more support is needed. Without continued funding, many of the vans we already have will stop running and a large portion of those who need transportation will lose their jobs. We've found a program that really works, and we're doing all we can to continue.
April 7, 2024
In 1953, 98% of men were either working or looking for work. Today, a Brookings.edu study says that one third of men of working age are spending most their time watching television. Meanwhile, employers in the U.S. are about 8.8 million workers short. But the good news is, this situation has opened a wide door of opportunity to people who are reentering society after incarceration.
March 21, 2024
While there is a push by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to give life sentences to people who commit 'speech crimes,' there is a large contingent of people with mental issues in our prisons and jails, who need help, but how? (Probably not LIFE imprisonment.)
March 7, 2024
Adjusting to a culture so different from living inside a prison or jail is no small thing and it takes time. Your loved one needs to get a license, or get a schedule with a parole agent, find a job, learn to help out around the house, and get used to his or her new life. Remember they've been told what to do for a long time, and won't want to be told much from you. Go gently, but firmly, and ask for their help.
February 21, 2024
"I think of boys getting guns and girls getting babies. Children who know how to create kids but not how to raise them. And I think of those dreadful numbers behind youth violence and carjackings, high school absenteeism and truancy rates, and the stream of young boys and girls…and I face how far we have fallen..."
February 7, 2024
The Innocence Project has been able to investigate, 249 people were found to be not guilty, 202 were exonerated by DNA evidence, and collectively, those prisoners spent 3,874 years in prison—each serving an average of 18 years for a crime they never committed.
January 22, 2024
When it comes to reentry, housing can be one of the most difficult needs to be met. Reentrants often leave the highly structured environment of prison or jail with no preparation or place to live, yet, study after study shows that unstable or nonexistent housing heightens the risk of being incarcerated again and about 10% become homeless on day one after release.
January 7, 2024
As constant as it seems for corporations to change names, they didn't invent the practice. According to the Bible, when God changed a person's name and gave him a new one, much like the corporations' aim, it was to establish a new identity. He changed the elderly and childless Abram, to "Abraham," meaning "father of a multitude" and it worked. Names change things.
December 21, 2023
Locked away from friends and family, from parents, siblings and children, incarcerated people have little option but to try and make the best of an unbearable situation at Christmas. Read the bitter-sweet reason one woman hates to call home during the holidays.
December 7, 2023
Most people in prison are not lifers, most are not dangerous, and as Sister would say, all are far more than the worst thing they have done. I can tell you from experience, that there is more hope, goodness, optimism, and energy in most reentrants than they will be given the opportunity to use. But as a society, we have given the deep freeze to people coming out of incarceration for as long as I can remember.
