PRISON FELLOWSHIP: PF News

Over 700,000 prisoners are released from prison each year.

Most people enter prison with little job experience or education. Many are placed behind bars which are hundreds of miles from family. Think about the difficulty of maintaining a relationship from miles away and behind bars.

Pat Nolan, Vice President of Prison Fellowship, writes in a recent editorial for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that prison work programs provide many benefits, but Nolan cautions that not all programs are equal.

Nolan writes of inmates’ lives and the importance of having a job:

Our mothers told us that “idle hands are the devil’s playground.”

Writing for the New Orleans City Business, Richard A. Webster details one prison where inmates are treated with constant verbal abuse and vicious beatings. While we understand this doesn’t happen in every prison, if it’s happening in one prison, it’s happening too much.

In a statement released today, Chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp., Henry Juszkiewicz, has endorsed the Right on Crime’s Statement of Principles. Justice Fellowship partners with the Right on Crime initiative for criminal justice solutions.

Explaining why he endorsed the Right on Crime principles, Juszkiezicz said:

“I am proud to endorse Right on Crime.

Roughly 230,000 prisoners, the population size of Orlando, Florida, are serving life sentences within U.S. prisons. Writing for the Associated Press, Michael Virtanen reports on the debate taking place regarding older prisoners and whether they should be released from prison due to overcrowding.

Gibson Guitar hand crafts more than 160,000 guitars every year in Nashville, TN and generates revenue of $500 million.

In a recent article, Newsmax reports that the guitar maker lost an estimated $2 to 3 million in revenue over the raid.

Imagine being freed from prison. Now, think about the challenge of being released at midnight with no place to go.

Brandi Grissom, writing in The New York Times, reveals what happens when prisoners are released in the wee hours of the morning with no home, no money, no phone and no plan other than living on the street.

Prison rape is an uncomfortable subject rarely covered in newspapers, a laugh line on late-night television. But the reality is that rape in our prisons is a national scandal.