| Founded | 1979 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Charles W. Colson |
| Focus | Biblical studies in prison, rehabilitation, child sponsorship |
| Location | |
Area served | 112 countries |
Key people | President and CEO: Andy Corley |
| Website | www |
Prison Fellowship International (PFI) is a Christian international non-governmental organization of national prison fellowship organizations from 112 countries. The organization is based in Washington D.C., United States, and its current president is Andy Corley.
The organization has its origins in the Prison Fellowship organization, which aims to support prisoners, founded in 1976 by Charles W. Colson, a former politician imprisoned for his involvement in the Watergate scandal. [1] [2] In November 1978, a meeting was held in Great Britain for the formation of a British antenna and to give an international dimension to the organization. [3] Prison Fellowship International was officially founded in 1979, [4] [5] and works in 112 countries as of 2022. [6]
For prisoners, groups of Bible studies are offered. [7]
Prison Fellowship International runs a child sponsorship program which aims to help needy children of prisoners with support in education and health care. [8]
The Angel Tree Program is an outreach to the children of prisoners at Christmas. Members of local churches volunteer to sponsor these children by purchasing a gift based on information gathered by PF volunteers and prison chaplains. [9]
Through the PFI Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, PFI seeks to promote the principles and practices of restorative justice—an approach to justice focusing on healing broken relationships, repairing the damage done by crime, and restoring the offender to a meaningful role in society. [10]
The Centre operates Restorative Justice Online and provides information and consultation to national PF organizations, [11] governments, [12] the United Nations, [13] and other organizations.
The PF restorative justice program is known as either the Sycamore Tree Project [14] or Umuvumu Tree Project. [15] Notably, in Rwanda, in response to the genocide of 1994, Prison Fellowship introduced the Umuvumu Tree Project through 11,000 traditional courts, resulting in more than 32,000 genocide offenders confessing to their crimes. [15] 23 PF national ministries ran the STP in 2009.
Based on APAC, the Brazilian model of faith-based prison communities, national PF organizations are adapting their own APAC projects. These faith-based prison communities are presently operating in 16 countries. [16]
As an NGO, PFI maintains Consultative Status (Category II) with the UN Economic and Social Council [13] and is an active participant in the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. [17]
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Restorative justice is an approach to justice where one of the responses to a crime is to organize a meeting between the victim and the offender, sometimes with representatives of the wider community. The goal is for them to share their experience of what happened, to discuss who was harmed by the crime and how, and to create a consensus for what the offender can do to repair the harm from the offense. This may include a payment of money given from the offender to the victim, apologies and other amends, and other actions to compensate those affected and to prevent the offender from causing future harm.
Prison Fellowship is the world's largest Christian nonprofit organization for prisoners, former prisoners, and their families, and a leading advocate for justice reform.
The prison abolition movement is a network of groups and activists that seek to reduce or eliminate prisons and the prison system, and replace them with systems of rehabilitation that do not place a focus on punishment and government institutionalization. The prison abolitionist movement is distinct from conventional prison reform, which is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons.
Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after they have experienced negative consequences of that behavior. It is also used to refer to the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested for a similar offense.
Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, improve the effectiveness of a penal system, or implement alternatives to incarceration. It also focuses on ensuring the reinstatement of those whose lives are impacted by crimes.
The Gacaca courts were a system of community justice in Rwanda following the 1994 genocide. The term 'gacaca' can be translated as 'short grass' referring to the public space where neighborhood male elders (abagabo) used to meet to solve local problems. The name of this system was then adopted in 2001 as the title of the state's new criminal justice system "Gacaca Courts" to try those deemed responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide where over an estimated 500,000 people were killed, tortured and raped. In 1994, the United Nations Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to try high-ranking government and army officials accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The Gacaca Courts were established in law in 2001, began to operate on a trial basis in 2002 and eventually came to operate as trials throughout the country by early 2007.
The Penal system of Japan is part of the criminal justice system of Japan. It is intended to resocialize, reform, rehabilitate and punish offenders. The penal system is operated by the Correction Bureau of the Ministry of Justice.
The American juvenile justice system is the primary system used to handle minors who are convicted of criminal offenses. The system is composed of a federal and many separate state, territorial, and local jurisdictions, with states and the federal government sharing sovereign police power under the common authority of the United States Constitution. The juvenile justice system intervenes in delinquent behavior through police, court, and correctional involvement, with the goal of rehabilitation. Youth and their guardians can face a variety of consequences including probation, community service, youth court, youth incarceration and alternative schooling. The juvenile justice system, similar to the adult system, operates from a belief that intervening early in delinquent behavior will deter adolescents from engaging in criminal behavior as adults.
Howard J. Zehr is an American criminologist. Zehr is considered to be a pioneer of the modern concept of restorative justice.
The Völkerstrafgesetzbuch, abbreviated VStGB, is a German law that regulates crimes against (public) international law. It allows cases to be brought against suspects under international criminal law provisions, meaning that suspects can be prosecuted even though both they and their victims are foreigners and the crime itself took place abroad.
Restorative practices is a social science that studies how to improve and repair relationships between people and communities. The purpose is to build healthy communities, increase social capital, decrease crime and antisocial behavior, repair harm and restore relationships. It ties together research in a variety of social science fields, including education, psychology, social work, criminology, sociology, organizational development and leadership.
Participatory justice, broadly speaking, refers to the direct participation of those affected most by a particular decision, in the decision-making process itself: this could refer to decisions made in a court of law or by policymakers. Popular participation has been called "the ethical seal of a democratic society" by Friedhelm Hengsbach, a professor of Christian Social Science and Economic and Social Ethics at the Philosophical-Theological College Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt and "the politics of the future" by Gene Stephens, professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina. It is about people and relationships.
Anne Aghion is a French-American documentary filmmaker. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Mac Dowell Colony Fellow and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Fellow.
The InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) was an American Christian prison program operated by Prison Fellowship International (PFI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit established by Chuck Colson. The program was closed in 2016.
The alternatives to imprisonment are types of punishment or treatment other than time in prison that can be given to a person who is convicted of committing a crime. Some of these are also known as alternative sanctions. Alternatives can take the form of fines, restorative justice, transformative justice or no punishment at all. Capital punishment, corporal punishment and electronic monitoring are also alternatives to imprisonment, but are not promoted by modern prison reform movements for decarceration due to them being carceral in nature.
The Forgiveness Project is a UK-based charity that uses real stories of victims and perpetrators of crime and violence to help people explore ideas around forgiveness and alternatives to revenge. With no political or religious affiliations, The Forgiveness Project's independent and inclusive approach ensures its core message – that everyone has the potential to change their perspective and break the cycle of vengeance – resonates across all cultures.
Incarceration prevention refers to a variety of methods aimed at reducing prison populations and costs while fostering enhanced social structures. Due to the nature of incarceration in the United States today caused by issues leading to increased incarceration rates, there are methods aimed at preventing the incarceration of at-risk populations.
Criminal justice reform addresses structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Reforms can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, sentencing and incarceration. Criminal justice reform can also address the collateral consequences of conviction, including disenfranchisement or lack of access to housing or employment, that may restrict the rights of individuals with criminal records.
Norway's criminal justice system focuses on the principles of restorative justice and the rehabilitation of prisoners. Correctional facilities in Norway focus on maintaining custody of the offender and attempting to make them a functioning member of society. Norway's laws forbid the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment as punishment. Prison conditions typically meet international standards, and the government permits visits by any human rights observers. The system is considered to be transparent, and prisoners are represented by an ombudsman, an official appointed to investigate individuals’ complaints against public authority.
Decarceration in the United States involves government policies and community campaigns aimed at reducing the number of people held in custody or custodial supervision. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate of imprisonment at the federal, state and municipal level. Home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners, the U.S. possess the world's highest incarceration rate: 655 inmates for every 100,000 people, enough inmates to equal the populations of Philadelphia or Houston. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the discussion surrounding decarceration as the spread of the virus poses a threat to the health of those incarcerated in prisons and detention centers where the ability to properly socially distance is limited.
