The Prison Society won funding from the recently announced ‘Second Chance Act’ for funding of a program in PA for “Building Bridges”. The program will begin with two prisons, to have sixty inmate and sixty mentors, in each institution. The inmates will have nine month to go to the end of their sentence, upon their return to society the mentors will continue working with these individuals as they begin life once again.
The goal is to provide for a stable and trusting support and with the help of an institution on the outside to track them, the results should be a lot better then the national rate of recidivism of over seventy eight percent.
Mr. Jonathan T. Backers has been hired by the Prison Society to lead this program “Building Bridges”. The two institutions chosen to implement the program will be SCI Pittsburgh – a prison for men in Pittsburgh and SCI Muncy – a women’s prison in central PA.
Mr. Backers asked the Aleph Institute to provide the Jewish component for ‘Building Bridges’ to give the Jewish men and women incarcerated the opportunity to benefit from what promises to be a great program.
In addition Aleph has agreed to be involved with the developing of this program as it gets formed, especially as Aleph has been working with many volunteers and the prison system in PA for close to twenty years.