Prison Fellowship Prison Programs

"Prison ministry is the single most dramatic evidence of the power of faith-based programs in addressing the most critical social problems of our day."
Chuck Colson, Founder of Prison Fellowship and BreakPoint

Prison Fellowship is the world's largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners, and their families in all 50 states and 110 countries worldwide.

The need to reach our nation's prisoners is desperate. It is now estimated that nearly 700,000 ex-offenders are released into our communities every year. More than half of these men and women will return to prison for committing new crimes.

Founded in 1976 by Charles W. Colson, Prison Fellowship targets the root causes of crime by applying the principles of restorative justice (restoring criminals, victims, and the community) through comprehensive, faith-based programs. Prison Fellowship's programs, funded primarily by the donations of American citizens who are passionate about the principles of restorative justice, include:

• In-prison mentoring

• In-prison educational training

• In-prison biblical training

• Post-prison assistance

• Angel Tree^®

• Justice Fellowship

In-Prison Mentoring: Building Positive Relationships
Mentors from the local church community are trained by Prison Fellowship and encouraged to consistently support and guide incarcerated men and women as they seek spiritual, emotional, and practical growth.

Educational Training: Providing the Skills to Rebuild
Part of this mentoring experience includes educational programs, marriage and relationship classes, and life-skills seminars that provide prisoners the tools they will need when re-entering society.

Biblical Training: Building a Moral Foundation
Prison Fellowship is based on the premise that crime is first and foremost the result of moral choices, above sociological, environmental, or economic forces. Therefore, biblical studies are a vital part of the in-prison program and mentoring. Incarcerated men and women meet with volunteers from local churches to learn how to apply Christian principles to their lives. Inmates are provided with devotional guides geared toward a prisoner's issues and concerns. In addition, Prison Fellowship's Inside Journal, the nation's largest newspaper for inmates, is distributed free of charge nationwide.

Post-prison assistance: Enabling Successful New Starts
Prison Fellowship encourages and equips the local church to address the needs of Christian ex-offenders who are returning to society. Through a network of churches, chaplains, pastors, volunteers, and related ministries, men and women coming out of prison can join a community that serves their transition needs with spiritual and practical support. Volunteer ex-offenders, who are successfully living in society, are a vital part of this program.

Angel Tree: Helping Families Build Strong Communities
Angel Tree is Prison Fellowship's year-round program that works with children of prisoners and their families through thousands of local churches. Angel Tree is committed to the overwhelming need to reach out to the two million children of prisoners, who, as studies indicate, are five times more likely than other children to end up in prison themselves. Twenty-four years ago, Angel Tree began by reaching out to the children of prisoners during the Christmas season. Now, Angel Tree is a year-round outreach program that includes mentoring opportunities and summer camping experiences for thousands of children throughout the country. Angel Tree reaches some 550,000 children each Christmas and sends more than 10,000 children to summer camp. There are currently 2,200 children involved in mentoring relationships through Prison Fellowship.

Justice Fellowship: A Different Approach to Criminal Justice
Justice Fellowship is Prison Fellowship's criminal justice reform program. It advocates for prisoners' rights and supports a restorative justice approach to crime: biblically based, commonsense reforms to our criminal justice system that heal victims, hold offenders accountable, reconcile victims and offenders, and work to restore peace to our communities.

Other Affiliations

Prison Fellowship partners with other faith-based organizations including:

The InnerChange Freedom Initiative^®: A Different Type of Reform
InnerChange Freedom Initiative is a voluntary faith-based prisoner rehabilitation program launched by Prison Fellowship. This program has proven to dramatically reduce re-arrest rates among participating inmates. Called "a model for Bush's ideas about faith-based funding" by the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 26, 2001), the program currently operates in prisons in six states: Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Arkansas, and Missouri.
 

• A study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania found that only 18 percent of InnerChange Freedom Initiative graduates-those who completed both the in-prison and post-prison components of the program-were re-arrested, compared with a 35 percent re-arrest rate from the matched comparison group.

Prison Fellowship International: Reaching Prisoners Around the World
Founded by Charles Colson in 1979, Prison Fellowship International (PFI) is the global association of international Prison Fellowship organizations. Its international headquarters near Washington serves and supports 112 countries around the world.

Operation Starting Line: Collaborating to Reduce Recidivism
In agreement with social scientists who have found that one of the few true predictors of reduced future criminal behavior by prisoners is a "change of heart," Prison Fellowship leads a national collaboration of Christian organizations, churches, prison ministries, and volunteers to reach out to more than 2 million inmates across the country and help stop the cycle of crime in America. Operation Starting Line includes in-prison outreach events, ongoing prisoner mentoring and education, and post-prison assistance.

-30-