just50steps.com

http://www.ccjrc.org/index.html

Check this site out. It has great links for resources and is an advocate for Prison reform.

Check out this update for the 2nd chance Act. Interesting. I am in the process of trying to develop a seminar/conference for Church mobilization. Anyone interested? Send a commet back and we can get the process rolling.

Subject: Sessions holds up prisoner rehab bill

From FedCURE

Senator concerned about spending, untested program

Thursday, January 03, 2008 Birmingham News
MARY ORNDORFF
News Washington correspondent

WASHINGTON - Sen. Jeff Sessions, in the final days of the congressional year, temporarily blocked legislation to help former prisoners re-enter society because of concerns that it would dramatically increase federal spending on untested programs.

The Alabama Republican’s staff asked for more time to review the Second Chance Act, which passed the House in November by a wide margin and has broad bipartisan support in the Senate.

Sessions supports the goal of helping released prisoners become productive citizens and less likely to commit another crime, his spokesman Stephen Boyd said Wednesday. But the proposal increases spending on grants for state and local governments from $16 million to $55 million. Sessions argued that some of those programs have not been fully evaluated and may duplicate existing programs.

The grants can go toward helping the recently incarcerated find employment, housing, substance abuse treatment and other assistance.
“We are looking at ways that we could improve the bill’s language in those respects,” Boyd said.

Overall, the proposed legislation would spend about $165 million annually on grants, research, career training, family counseling and mentoring, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center, which endorses the bill.

With about 1.7 million people in state and federal prisons and most of them serving less than a life sentence, advocates say the issue of recidivism has attracted liberals and conservatives who want to keep people from cycling back through, costing taxpayers money and causing prison crowding. Almost 68 percent of prisoners are rearrested within three years, according to Department of Justice statistics.

“A modest expenditure to help transition offenders back into the community can save taxpayers thousands of dollars in the long run,” Rep. Chris Cannon, R - Utah, said when the bill passed the House 347-62. “Nothing in this bill will shorten sentences or ameliorate punishment. The work of this bill begins the day someone steps outside of the prison gates.”

Everyone in Alabama’s House delegation voted for the bill except Rep. Artur Davis, D - Birmingham, who missed the vote because he was in Birmingham attending the mayor’s inauguration.

Bobby Timmons, president of the Alabama Sheriffs Association, said the Second Chance Act is necessary because prisoners need more rehabilitation than they get behind bars.

“They need some kind of program to be put back into society so they don’t go back into the criminal element that put them there to start with,” Timmons said. “If it works, they’re out of my hair and not back being a problem for me anymore.”

The bill number is H.R. 1593.

E-mail: morndorff@bhamnews.com
http://www.al.com/birminghamnews/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1199351722157630.xml&coll=2 <http://www.al.com/birminghamnews/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1199351722157630.xml&coll=2>

Gene Guerrero
Open Society Institute/Open Society Policy Center
1120 19th Street, NW, 8th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20036
Phone: 202-721-5607
Fax: 202-530-0128

Welcome to Just 50 Steps! We are attempting to mobilize the church to mentor men and women from incarceration to freedom. This site is up for that purpose. Unity, effective ministry and strategic collaboration. I am amazed at the inability of those attempting to work this field, to lack a cohesive approach in their efforts to change recidivism, one step at a time, one person at a time. I invite you to blog and connect, link to your work and interact as we see some real evangelism to the inmate, to the system and to the church!