According to the most recent report from the Pew Institute's Public Safety Performance Project: "Between probation, parole, jail and prison, the US correctional population exceeds seven million people. One in every 43 US residents is currently under correctional supervision."  I estimate that at least another two million criminals live among us between stints of correctional supervision. These nearly 10 million individuals prey upon law abiding citizens at a rate of more than $400 billion annually. That's a prodigious investment that generates almost no return. By return on investment (ROI), I mean an ever-growing number of criminals transforming into contributing citizens.

In this article I will not recount the depresssing data ad infinitum. We know crime raes across our nation. We also know that many times the criminals are people we love. In this article I will outline a strategy by which the almost 20 million family members and loved ones of criminals can organize themselves into a formidable force for change. Therefore, I propose to introduce a strategy to help organize the families and loved ones of criminals into the Network of Families and Loved Ones of Criminals (NFLOC).

Consider this analogy!

Picture a huge fishing net, composed of thousands of diamond-shaped connectors, none of which could catch a fish individually. But

From California to New York, from Michigan to Arizona, from Maine to Florida, about 600,000 criminals walk out of the nation's state and federal prisons annually and move into our communities. One of the most recent recidivism studies reveal that more than 75 percent of them return to prison within three years. The study, however, does not explain that happenes to the other 25 percent--about 150,000 individuals. Do they change? Do they become contributing citizens? Chances are that most of them do not become contributing citizens. You see, if 150,000 former prisoners every year bean the arduous trek from crime to contribution, we would begin downsizin the prison industrial complex. Instead, prison populations grow continually and studies project more of the same.

A recent report from the Public Safety Performance Project, financed by the Pew Charitable Trust, drew the following conclusions:

1. The nation's state and federal prison population will reach 1,722,477 by 2011--an increase of approximately 192,000 over a five-year period.
2. This rate of growth--about 38,400 more inmates per year--is markedly higher than the growth rate of the past three years.
3. The prison incarceration rate will continue to grow, from 491 per 100,000 U.S. residents in 2005 to 511 per 100,000 in 2006, then to 562 per 100,000 in 2011.
4. The Western reion will have the largest prison population increase (18 percent) while the Northeast will experience the smallest growth, seven percent.

This next statistic boggles the mind. Pew reports: "Almost two-thirds of the estimated 600,000 plus people who are admitted to prison are those who have failed to complete probation or parole."

Did you catch that?

Yes, we release about 600,000 inmatesw every year, but at the same time, we imprison another 600,000 criminals.

It is clear that many of those 600,000 criminals who go to prison each year are repeat offenders who were released last year, the year before that, or the year before that. So the question becomes how do we shatter this incredibly expensive cycle of crime, arrest, conviction, incarceration, release and recidivism (CACIRR). Is it possible? Can it be done? Is there a systematic process by which criminals can become community contributions?

Unequivocably yes! It is not easy! But criminals can change. I know! I did it!

I launched my crime career when I was five-years old by stealin $5 from my aunt's pocketbook. Thus, for 20 years, I did something criminal almost every day. Imprisoned when I was 17-years-old, I spent more than 80 months of the 120 months during the 1960s in North Carolina's prisons. Released Dec. 9, 1968, I've spent 39 years learning how to change, how to make the arduous trek from crime to contribution.

I summarize the process this way! To change, a criminal must:

1. Break the crime habit
2. Earn an ever-free life
3. Achieve the crime and prison record into insignificance
4. Teach and train others to duplicate his or her efforts

I will deal with each of these steps to change in subsequent article, but now please understand that the families and loved ones of criminals (FLOC) play critically important roles in this process, More on that later, too,.

See you at success!