Prison Fellowship
| Founded | 1976 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Chuck Colson |
| Focus | Prison outreach |
| Location | |
| Leader | James J. Ackerman |
| Slogan | Remember Those in Prison |
| Website | http://www.prisonfellowship.org |
Prison Fellowship is the world's largest Christian ministry to prisoners. The evangelical group was founded by former Richard Nixon aide Charles W. Colson, who was sentenced to prison for a Watergate-related crime. The group is known for merging Christian conservatism with support for criminal justice reform.
Prison Fellowship was founded in 1976 by Charles Colson, a former aide to President Nixon who served a seven-month sentence for a Watergate-related crime. In 1979, Prison Fellowship International was founded as an international outreach to prisoners and a sister organization of Prison Fellowship. The 1980s brought additional growth to the organization as it created its Angel Tree program and its justice reform division called Justice Fellowship. While the organization has always sought to provide faith-based programming to those in prison, the 1990s saw a rise in more intensive programs provided by the organization that sought to integrate education, life-skills, and counseling into a holistic program for prisoners in certain jurisdictions.
Prison Fellowship's advocacy department, originally conducted by a sister organization called Justice Fellowship, calls for federal and state criminal justice reforms that transform those responsible for crime, validate victims, and encourages churches and communities to play a role in creating a safe, redemptive, and just society. Prison Fellowship has worked with members of Congress to pass the following pieces of criminal justice reform legislation: the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993), the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (2000), the Prison Rape Elimination Act (2003), the Second Chance Act (2008), the Fair Sentencing Act (2010), and the 21st Century Cures Act (2016) as well as a variety of state-level criminal justice reforms.
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