Prison Fellowship International

Prison Fellowship International (PFI) believes that the tipping point to significantly reduce global crime levels is to transform the lives of two million prisoners and their families every year, so they turn away from criminal lifestyles. While multiple factors contribute towards breaking cycles of crime, two primary factors are most relevant within PFI's context:

1. Prisoners form new positive self-identities that replace negative past self-identities.
2. Prisoners develop positive social relationships that provide support and belonging as they leave prison and return to their families and communities.

These ideas interconnect because former prisoners are more likely to seek and form positive social relationships as part of the transformational process of forming a new self-identity. Through in-prison and children's based programming, PFI and its national affiliates get closer to reaching this tipping point every year.

Prison Fellowship International's strategic efforts to reach a tipping point to significantly reduce global crime levels include:

1. Build organizational capacity in more than 120 National Ministries around the world by providing best practices, training and program partnerships to increase local, regional and global impact.

2. Through program partnerships, work with National Ministries around the world to provide food, clothing, education, medical care, and spiritual and emotional support and resources to children of prisoners to ensure each child escapes the dangers of their situation and flourishes to decrease the likelihood that they repeat the cycle of crime.

3. Through program partnerships, work with National Ministries around the world to run in-prison evangelism, discipleship and restorative courses that transform the lives of prisoners, ultimately changing their attitude and behavior to desist from a criminal life and break the cycle once released.

Prison Fellowship International (PFI) has built upon experience working in prisons and with families around the world since 1979, making it the largest, most extensive association of national Christian ministries working within the criminal justice field. The more than 120 of PFI's multi-denominational affiliates are grounded in indigenous and autonomous leadership and local funding, enabling ministry in culturally relevant ways. The PFI family mobilizes more than 60,000 volunteers, 1,600 staff members and nearly 2,000 churches to restore and rehabilitate prisoners, help their families, and integrate them back into their communities.

To date, Prison Fellowship International (PFI) has graduated nearly 1 million prisoners from its in-prison evangelism, discipleship and restorative programs in more than 1,000 prison sites across 50 countries in every region of the world. Studies have proven that these programs create lasting life changes for participants. Findings found that through increasing religious engagement, indicators of successful rehabilitation and actions that typically lead to positive culture change in prisons increased. PFI has also served nearly 18,000 children of prisoners by providing them with practical physical care, along with emotional and spiritual support.

Though PFI and its National Ministries have access to 67% of the worlds prison population, they are only reaching 8% of incarcerated individuals with meaningful program interventions. Programmatic impact needs to scale in order to reach a global tipping point that breaks the cycle of crime in this lifetime. PFI is doubling down on its strategy to build capacity of itself, its program partners and the wider affiliate network to increase ministry impact to those in prison and their families. Alongisde Pepperdine University, PFI has undertaken a study of more than 12 programs to determine the effetiveness of programing in helping those in prison leave their criminal lifestyle, and supporting children and families so that they do not continue the cycle. Study findings will produce best practices that will be promoted to all National Ministries in the coming years to strengthen local own programming, make key partnerships available and grow the number of prisoners and families being served worldwide.