Faith-based Rehabilitation Programs in Prisons
Yashila Crowell
JUS 510 Contemporary CJ Issues and Trends
April 13, 2014
Professor Lacy Ellis

Faith-based rehabilitation programs are support groups within the prison system that inmates can be a part of to encourage, support, stability, growth, life changing skills, and thinking. These programs can help assist inmates in adjusting to prison life while being incarcerated and it can also help them have a strong foundation upon their release. In addition, these programs can help give them a positive view of life and some type of structure once they are released back into society.
There are many types of faith-based programs such as Prison Fellowship (PF), the Inner Change
(Yoon & Nickel, 2008, p. 4).
Although there are many faith-based programs within the prison system there are also community organizations which include the Safer Foundation and Ready4Work organizations. The Safer Foundation is a large non-profit organization that administers two minimum security male residential transition centers on behalf of the Illinois Department of Corrections. In 2004, there was a study conducted which focused on a group of prisoners who were released from the Illinois Department of Corrections in 2000. The study showed that the three-year recidivism rate for the entire group was 54 percent which was more than half. On the contrary, the recidivism rate for those released prisoners who were clients of the Safer Foundation and received employment services and kept a job was 21 percent.
The Ready4Work community organization is a three-year pilot program that operates in eleven major cities across the country. Ready4Work is jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, Public/Private Ventures, U.S. Department of Justice, and various private organizations. The program is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor and Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. "Ready4Work provides employment-focused programs, which incorporate mentoring, job training, job placement, case management, and other reentry services, to people released from state prisons" (Yoon & Nickel, 2008, p. 2). According to Public/Private Ventures,