Did you ever wonder what percent of released prisoners go straight?

 

By David McClelland

 

I attended a lecture by Mark Earley, President and CEO of Prison Fellowship, while on vacation in Florida and was impressed not only by his mission accomplishments, but by many of the statistics he cited on prisoners in our country.

 

Earley said that about 1 out of every 100 people in this country is incarcerated and that 1 out of every 32 people is under the supervision of a prison system; i.e., either currently in prison or on parole. I had no idea the numbers were so great. He also said that 75% of the men in prison were from fatherless homes. Those numbers are staggering!

 

Earley was a practicing attorney in Norfolk, Virginia for 15 years and his work frequently took him to jails and prisons to meet with his clients and to build relationships with "men and women on the other side of the law." Later, Earley served in the Virginia State Senate for 10 years and was its Attorney General for one term. He said that while in those jobs, he was tough on crime. He ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Virginia in 2001. Soon thereafter, he received a call from Chuck Colson, then President and CEO of Prison Fellowship, saying that he was retiring and asking Early to be his replacement. Recall that Colson had been imprisoned for his part in the Watergate scandal under President Nixon.

 

After much reflection, Earley agreed to become head of Prison Fellowship and has been doing its work for nearly 10 years. What is Prison Fellowship's mission? It is to help prepare soon-to-be-released prisoners for their release from prison and to provide assistance to them to help them STAY out of prison.

 

More national statistics: Earley said the recidivism rate for prisoners released from prison within the first year is 44%, but this number rises even further to 67.5% after 3 years. And, to make matters much worse, on the average, each year, 67% of the people who were rearrested were charged with close to 750,000 new crimes and over 100,000 of those were violent crimes, including an average of 2,871 murders and 2,444 rapes. And, while in prison, at least 70 percent of the inmates were assaulted by another inmate. When these events occur, the victim usually suffers emotionally as well as physically. This often leads the inmates to accept these types of behaviors and to value their life and the lives of others less by the time they are released. These dehumanizing acts combined with the learned violent behavior greatly influence the causes of recidivism.

 

The most recent figures I could find for Michigan, show the recidivism rate is 46%, close to the national average. However, in Washtenaw County, the recidivism rate is 76%.

 

A Florida study showed that the greatest chance for recidivism occurs within the first 6 months after release from prison and that the longer a released prisoner stays out of prison, the less likely they are to return.

 

Earley told of a county in Texas that has a recidivism rate of only 8% that is believed to be the result of work by a Christian group who counseled prisoners nearing parole and worked with them upon release to assist them in finding jobs and in joining churches. He said Prison Fellowship has adopted many of this group's practices and that their work is reducing recidivism across the country, which gives him renewed hope. 

 

What percent of prisoners go straight? As a nation, it is only about about 33% today, but there is hope that that number could be greatly reduced if the work of Earley's Prison Fellowship and others like it continue. I hope that this blog has you yearning to know more about this huge problem. You can learn more at www.prisonfellowship.org.