Nearly 650,000 people are released from state and federal prison yearly and arrive on the doorsteps of communities nationwide. A far greater number reenter communities from local jails, and for many offenders and /defendants, this may occur multiple times in a year. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) over 50 percent of those released from incarceration will be in some form of legal trouble within 3 years. In his 2004 State of the Union, President Bush proposed “a four-year, $300 million prisoner re-entry initiative to expand job training and placement services, to provide transitional housing, and to help newly released prisoners get mentoring, including from faith-based groups.”
What’s
New
On April 28, 2009, PBS will air a FRONTLINE series film, The Released. The film explores what happens to mentally ill offenders once they are released from prison.
View the video trailer available at pbs.org/frontline/released.
The Second Chance Act of 2007
(H.R. 1593/S. 1934)
This bill was signed into law on April 9, 2008 to reauthorize revise the grant program within the Department of Justice (DOJ) for reentry of offenders into the community in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, to improve reentry planning and implementation, and for other purposes.
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