Nearly two-thirds of the 600,000 plus prisoners in the United States who are released each year are expected to be rearrested for a felony or misdemeanor within three years of release. Most will commit a new crime within the first six months after release.  According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, expenditures on corrections alone increased from $9 billion in 1982 to $44 billion in 1997, a five times increase in a quarter of a century.
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The successful reintegration of former prisoners into society is a challenging task. An ex-offender attempting to transition from prison life to living in his community – especially after serving a lengthy sentence – comes up against multiple barriers. He often has received little or no preparation for life outside the prison walls. Finding employment, housing, basic health care or public assistance can become overwhelming tasks.  He may lack interpersonal skills necessary to succeed in society.

Unless these barriers and problems can be effectively addressed, recidivism will continue to plague us and the costs of the cycle of incarceration and reentry will continue to be a huge burden for the taxpayer and continue to produce negative social consequences.
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Research and experience has shown us that all criminality begins first with the loss of self-respect and personal integrity. All other observable problems, such as drug abuse and immorality, are simply symptoms that manifest themselves after the individual has lost his self-respect and personal integrity.

Criminon has seen that, once self-respect is gone, a sense of hopelessness sets in, and an individual adopts a mind set that he has no future and no way out. This warped reality causes him to choose a path of immorality, and he often resorts to crime to survive. He is completely unaware that no individual can survive without living a life based on common sense values and ethical principles.

So the first and most vital reform action must be the restoration of self-respect and personal integrity. Each individual can be brought to realize that he is basically a good person, and that there is hope for the future. Unless this occurs, support services that include housing and jobs are not enough to break the cycle of recidivism.

It is the individual himself who must take responsibility for his actions and it is our view that a criminal’s reformation is dependent upon his willingness to effect a change in his life. These things are accomplished through the Criminon program. The end result is a person who is empowered to produce, to be effective and to contribute to society instead of being a drain on it.

Criminon addresses the “revolving door” of recidivism—a revolving door through which offenders are released from prison increasingly committed to a life of crime and through which they rapidly return to confinement with new offenses on their record. The Criminon program directly addresses this area by effectively restoring self-respect and life skills to offenders and returning them to society as positive and contributive members.

With 60-80% reduction in recidivism rates common among program graduates, Criminon is creating safer communities. It accomplishes this by ensuring that those released from prison are not hardened offenders ready to commit new offenses but rather self-respecting and responsible men and women.