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Talk's CEO was so moved by her visit to Prison Fellowship, she decided to honor their fine work
and extraordinary people by devoting an entire e-zine to this amazing Loudoun based organization.
Service Incarcerated:
Prison Fellowship Eases Prison Suffering
By Yolanda Reyes
 In a graceful building of brick and glass, a group of unlikely heroes composed of prominent former convicts and politicians do the quiet and diligent work of helping better the lives of prison inmates around the world.
Prison Fellowship, an international Christian ministry based at the Lansdowne campus, began as the brainchild of Charles "Chuck" Colson, former Special Counsel for President Richard Nixon and the first member of the administration to be incarcerated for charges related to Watergate.
Colson served seven months of a one-to-three year sentence after he pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction of justice. After his brief stint in jail, Colson emerged a changed man and dedicated his life to helping prison inmates and their communities. Prison Fellowship has since partnered with churches throughout the United States to carry out this ministry of transformation, providing services through a network of 20,000 volunteers in the U.S. alone.
According to data from the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London, there are more people incarcerated in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Approximately 2.3 million people live behind bars, representing about one in 100 American adults. Russia lags behind with 627 prisoners per 100,000 and China, which is four times more populous than the U.S., was second in sheer numbers of prisoners with 1.6 million.
Prison Fellowship's global face, Prison Fellowship International, is in 115 countries through groups of self-supporting individualized programs through localized efforts. The ministry focuses on acts of mercy: providing clean water and food, blankets and soap in prisons around the world. In countries like Bolivia, children go to prison with their parents, so Prison Fellowship International develops programs that get kids out of jail for three to five hours a day. Illiteracy is also a major problem, both at home and abroad.
"We focus on alleviating human suffering and giving them tools that will equip them to live life on the outside," said Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
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The Lawyer
Following his loss to Democrat Party Leader Mark Warner in the 2001 gubernatorial race, Earley got a phone call from Colson, asking him to join the staff of Prison Fellowship. Earley was intrigued. His criminal justice philosophy at the time focused more on punitive measures, and he had worked throughout his political life to abolish parole and enforce mandatory prison sentences, so advocating prisoner's issues was a departure of sorts. "I didn't really have a position or view of prisoners changing their lives," Earley said.
He had been in prisons before as an attorney and state legislator, but working with Prison Fellowship offered Earley a second look, this time not through the eyes of a tough, precise lawmaker, but through the eyes of the inmates.
"I saw the system was, in essence, failing. We've been doing a good job of getting people off the street, but we're not keeping the public any safer. I knew we weren't really helping inmates," he said. "Those are some of the things that tipped the balance in my thinking. I realized this is where I needed to be for the next season of my life."
Personally, working with Prison Fellowship has been a life-altering experience for Earley. "If I had known then when I was in the Senate what I know now, it would have changed my perspective," he said. "There's not a whole lot more to do in the U.S. to get tough on crime, but there's a lot more to do to help the community. I would have been fighting for more dollars for rehabilitative programming so prison can offer the opportunity to change."
The ministry does much of its programming inside prison, helping inmates plan for their release as early as possible in order to keep them from relapsing into a life of crime.
Earley finds himself in a prison somewhere in the continental United States at least once a month. Once Prison Fellowship has the chance to get in the door, often they can spend several hours with prisoners mentoring them and helping them fill out forms, or just talking with them. "They have a lot of free time on their hands," Earley said.
However, cuts in state funding have affected the number of staff available to process volunteers, meaning groups like Prison Fellowship have to work with fewer hours of programming. "Every state has cut the corrections budget to the bone, which decreased our programming opportunities and our chance to get significant time with the prisoners."
Generally, little thought is given to what will happen on a prisoner's release date in most cases, and if any planning is done it's usually in the last few months of a prisoner's sentence: sometimes planning means as little as $25 and a bus ticket.
"They're not coming out with more skills; that's why recidivism rates are so high," Earley said.. Confronting Confinement, a June 2006 U.S. prison study by the bipartisan Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, found that 67 percent of former prisoners are rearrested and 52 percent are re-incarcerated within three years of their release.
The ministry tries to help prisoners start planning for their release as early as their first day in prison.
Prison Fellowship focuses its efforts on initiatives to break that cycle, such as getting prisoners a General Education Diploma (GED) and vocational training, mentoring them and discussing the life and teachings of Jesus. "Prisoners find that it gives them hope," Earley said.
More than 65 percent of prisoners have drug and alcohol problems, Earley said, so special attention is given to the need for substance abuse counseling as well.
Another innovation in Prison Fellowship's ministry has been a collaboration with Toastmasters International to help prisoners gain confidence through better public speaking. "They've never learned how to look someone in the eye and talk rationally about something with any confidence," Earley said.
The overall prison environment can be positively influenced by the inclusion by even the simplest preventive measures and counseling. Most prisoners in the United States are simply being warehoused, he said, in some cases spending years in downtown high-rise facilities where they don't have the opportunity to go outside. It's a state of affairs that affects everyone, including corrections officers. Earley has seen prison officials as men and women become more compassionate as a result of the ministry, creating better morale throughout the prison and fewer discipline issues.
Earley hopes the ministry can help change prison culture enough to help the communities that will receive ex-offenders when they leave. "When I look at men and women in prison now I see opportunity," Earley said. "It's made me much more sensitive and aware and compassionate of people who have been pushed to the edge of society."
Earley hopes that his example is now a greater estimation of Jesus' example. "I was content to be with people who thought like me," he said, "I've seen how people who come from a broken background can come out of the hole and become leaders in their community. These people have an incredible amount of potential."
"Failure can make you a better success down the road - if you don't give up," he said.
The Legislator
 Pat Nolan is almost breathless as he ticks points off and moves books and stacks of papers relevant to his work around his desk. He recites a line from Richard Lovelace's "To Althea From Prison."
"We were required to memorize that one in school. I hated to memorize," he said as he finished.
Nolan was elected to the California State Assembly and served from 1978 until his incarceration in 1992 for accepting illegal campaign contributions in an FBI sting. He resigned his seat and spent 25 months in a federal prison.
"I never thought I would end up in prison," he said. "I was a very tough law and order guy, and I supported that because I thought that it would increase public safety. When I got there I saw nothing that would repair these people or prepare them for the world when they got out. That really shocked me."
As he sits and thinks a moment about the prison experience, his face darkens and saddens. "It's the total lack of control over your life: where to sleep, when you get up, what you eat, where you are, who you associate with." He paused for breath. "You're not allowed to defend yourself, you're cut off from your family, home, work, church, associates. It's like being an amputee, and with your stumps bleeding, you're tossed into this boiling cauldron of anger and bitterness, hate and sexual repression."
His time away was very difficult on his wife and three young children. At one point during his incarceration, he recalled, the entire family came down with the chicken pox. "You feel totally helpless," he said.
He first became familiar with Prison Fellowship when he and another inmate found applications to Angel Tree. The ministry's Angel Tree program sends gifts to half a million children throughout the United States in the name of their incarcerated loved one.
"It was like found gold," he said. "This wonderful couple contacted my wife and asked them if there was an article of clothing or toy they would like. They came over and prayed with the family. When they left, my wife shut the door, and my eldest looked up at her and said, 'I knew Daddy would remember.'"
He had no idea how much it would mean to them. "I don't think anyone knew," he said.
After his release and a four-month stay in a halfway house, Nolan and his family boarded a plane for the East Coast to become part of Prison Fellowship. "I went from the halfway house to the airport," he said. Nolan has been with Prison Fellowship for the past 13 years. He is now President of the Justice Fellowship subdivision of the Prison Fellowship and is a commissioner for the US federal government's National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, a bipartisan panel aimed at curbing prison rape.
Justice Fellowship works on drafting legislation in conjunction with legislative staff and review language as the bill passes through the amendment process to endorse any changes. Justice Fellowship also generates support among Prison Fellowship volunteers and donors. The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 was one of those initiatives. The measure requires the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to measure the incidence and prevalence of sexual assault within the Nation's correctional facilities.
Recently Justice Fellowship worked to pass the Second Chance Act, which was signed into law in 2008. The legislation is designed to improve outcomes for people returning to the community from prisons and jails and authorizes federal grants to government agencies and nonprofit organizations to provide employment assistance, substance abuse treatment, housing, family programming, mentoring, victims support, and other services that can help reduce recidivism, according to the Council of State Governments.
In fiscal year 2009, $25 million was appropriated for Second Chance Act programs, including $15 million for state and local reentry demonstration projects and $10 million for grants to nonprofit organizations for mentoring and other transitional services. President Obama has requested $212 million for prisoner re-entry programs in fiscal year 2010, including $100 million for Second Chance Act grant programs administered by the US Department of Justice and $112 million for re-entry programs administered by the U.S. Department of Labor.
"That was such a feat," Nolan said. "Last year was all very partisan year in Congress. And yet we had a remarkable group of bipartisan leaders who set aside their differences to pass this. It's really remarkable. There was nothing in it for the legislators and yet it passed overwhelmingly."
Nolan believes the ministry perfectly knits together experience as a lawyer, a legislator and a prisoner in order to fill three key needs: prison reform, atonement to the victims and community support. "If any one of those three things was missing, I wouldn't be able to do my job as well," Nolan said.
The key to the ministry's success on Capitol Hill is due to its wellspring of community donations and volunteers, Nolan said. The ministry operates entirely through donation and receives no government funds or corporate money. "We're viewed as honest brokers," he said. "Because we're national in scope and respected in the states we can share information that's working elsewhere. We're part of the mechanism of sharing so those ideas can be fitted to meet the needs of that jurisdiction."
Nolan is also working the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Walmart to eliminate policies that automatically reject a prospective employee with felony convictions and on other initiatives to reform probation and parole protocol to encourage inmates while still monitoring them.
"I love this job. I get to see God at work," Nolan said. "There's so many times when we thought [a bill] was dead, something comes out of the blue to get things back on track."
The prison rape initiatives, for example: "It's like surfing. God is this powerful wave and we're just along for the ride."
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The Lady of the House
"I was co-director of the mentoring program Naomi Project in Fairfax when I came to Loudoun County," said president and founder of Loudoun Aftercare Debora Lavin. "I just happened on the doorstep of Prison Fellowship."
Lavin had been living in Loudoun for several years and was searching for the chance to give back to the community around her when she met Nolan at church, "and he asked me if I was interested in starting a mentoring program for ex-offenders." That was the beginning of Loudoun Aftercare, she said. "And we just went from there."
All participants in Loudoun Aftercare are also required to go to Loudoun County Mental Health and those with substance abuse issues are required to attend 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous or seek other forms of treatment. Regular church attendance is also required.
Approximately 50 participants have been in the program since it first started in 2006, along with their families. "We've had a lot of them that don't complete the program. They just don't want to do what they need to do," Lavin said. "We have a lot of people who sign up. They think they want it. Of the people who have completed the program, not one has gone back to jail. But we're a young program, so it's hard to know."
Like Prison Fellowship, Loudoun Aftercare starts to get to know inmates and their families while they're still incarcerated to find out what specific needs they may have and offers many of the same basic services. "Our [ministry] is local to Loudoun County. We're directly affiliated with our local jails," Lavin said. "Our goal is to have them become independent and self-sufficient. Usually when they get released they have nothing to their name."
In some cases, assistance means furniture and food for the families of inmates while they're incarcerated. Sometimes it's just a kind ear in a time of trouble. "A lot of times their family doesn't want anything to do with them, so a lot of times we help them re-establish relationships with their families. You really can't mentor a person without mentoring the whole family, especially when there's children involved. It becomes a much bigger effort."
Loudoun Aftercare, like Prison Fellowship, also provides gifts for prisoner's families during the holidays through its Christmas for the Children program, delivered with a personal card and message from the parent by the sponsoring church or organization.
There are 10 participating churches that support the all-volunteer program, either as mentors or in positions behind the scenes with the program's administration.
Ex-inmates who choose to stay in the program are paired with a mentor at least three to six months prior to their release in order to give them a connection with a person outside of the system who is available to drive them to appointments, see their parole officer or just to talk. The mentors commit to a relationship with that inmate for a full year. Former inmates also have access to a financial coach and a life coach to help them find training, education and employment.
For men, there is also transitional housing. "It makes a huge difference," Lavin said. "We're finding the combination of the mentor and the transitional house has made a big difference. They're doing incredibly well."
Four men reside in Loudoun Aftercare's transitional housing program, which takes in ex-offenders for a minimum of six months. "Most of the guys ask for extensions so it could be up to a year," Lavin said. "A year is probably better. They need to build up that consistency and stay on track for a year without making any big changes in their lives."
Participants do pay rent, but Loudoun Aftercare keeps the price low to allow the inmates to build savings, pay debt and rebuild broken relationships without the additional financial burden. The balance of the rent is paid by donors to Loudoun Aftercare.
"A lot of time they don't have family," Lavin said. "When they come out and they don't have anything, it's very difficult for them to make it. It's hard to find a job when you don't have an address. Most of them don't even have clothing to wear. It's pretty hard to be successful if that's your situation."
Another Chance at Life
"I've lived on the streets on and off for years because of my alcoholism and my drug addiction, so we can all relate to what we've been through," said transitional housing resident Tim Tulley.
The majority of inmates throughout the U.S. have a problem with alcohol or drugs, and the situation in Loudoun Aftercare's Alpha House is similar. Most of the men who will stay in this house have drug-related offenses or were re-incarcerated through a parole violation that involved drugs.
Tulley was in jail for a year after he violated his probation. "It was like a full-time job getting enough money to drink. I was just so far down," Tulley said. "I just wanted to end it all. I was so tired of living that life and I didn't see anyway out. I thought I was doomed to this type of life."
The original charge was unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, however a failed drug test violated the terms of his parole and he ran to North Carolina. He was picked up for absconding after a year. Upon his arrival in Loudoun County, a judge sentenced him to two years, suspended one, and sent him away to serve his remaining year. That same judge sentenced him to Alpha House upon his release. "I'm really glad that it happened that way. Going through the whole process has really gotten my life together," Tulley said.
Now the assistant residential manager of Alpha House, Tulley is someone new arrivals know can relate to their circumstances.
"You don't have a place to live, you don't have a job, you don't have an address or a place to get cleaned up," Tulley said. "Before, when I was incarcerated and I got out, a lot of times you don't have anywhere to go. You wind up wandering around the streets. You do that and in a few weeks you're right back in jail again."
Now, he's a graduate of the program - clean, sober and a church regular who stays in touch with his mentor and is in regular contact with his brother in Georgia and the rest of his family in Richmond. "I'm a happier person now," he said. "I talk to my family all the time now. They were worried to death about me when I was out there. They're very happy for me."
Tulley hopes he can help some of the men coming through Alpha House the same way others helped him. "We need more places like this. Hopefully the program will get bigger," he said. He's now thinking about taking classes at Northern Virginia Community College. "I have no idea what I'm going to take, but I'm going to check into it. It's never too late."How You Can Help
Both Loudoun Aftercare and Prison Fellowship accept donations and volunteers. For more information about Loudoun Aftercare, log on to http://lap.netmark-solutions.com or call (703)554-8469. For more information about Prison Fellowship, log on to www.prisonfellowship.org or call (877)478-0100. Prison Fellowship's Angel Tree also accepts donations directly. To make a donation to Angel Tree, log on to http://helpangeltree.org or call (800)55-ANGEL (2-6435).
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