For the vast majority of inmates, prison cells are not their permanent address. Most prisoners will serve their sentences and then return back into our communities. What kind of neighbors will they be?
If current trends continue, over half of them will be rearrested and back in prison within three years. These high failure rates represent a threat to public safety and increased cost to taxpayers. With more than 735,000 men and women coming home from state and federal prisons each year, making sure they are ready to be peaceful, productive citizens is a critical public safety concern.
That’s why Prison Fellowship, the world’s largest outreach to prisoners and their families, launched the Out4Life campaign back in 2007. Out4Life is a holistic approach to prisoner reentry that harnesses the strengths of both government agencies and nonprofit organizations to help offenders make a successful reentry into society. Out4Life is neither a reentry program nor an event, but is rather a long-term campaign to develop coalitions that will be able to reduce recidivism across the country.
