John Conyers: “As the prison population has grown over the past two decades, so has the number of prisoners completing their sentencing…”

“As the prison population has grown over the past two decades, so has the number of prisoners completing their sentencing and returning to the general population. More than half a million, some 650,000 men and women, are leaving the Federal and State prisons each year. While the vast majority of the prisoners are committed to abiding by the law and becoming productive members of society, they often encounter the same pressures, the same environment, the same temptations that they faced before prison, and with insufficient resources to assist them in dealing with those pressures and temptations, sometimes, despite their best intentions at the time of release, too many of them commit new crimes and end up back in prison. More than two-thirds of them are arrested for new crimes within 3 years of their release. This exacts a terrible cost in financial terms as well as in human terms. The bipartisan legislation we are considering today, aptly named the Second Chance Act, complements those efforts by helping give ex-offenders the tools they need to stay out of trouble.”