Ruthina Veltman Email

Head Social Media and Channels . Alpha USA

Current Roles

Employees:
139
Revenue:
$15M
About
Alpha USA through collaboration with other faith based and community organizations offer re-entry services to the criminal justice system. Based upon proven faith based models of re-entry, which have demonstrated a dramatic reduction in recidivism rates for participating inmates, the program is provided by volunteers and locally coordinated. Generally speaking each prison warden would attest to the fact that there are more Faithbased volunteers requesting access to their prison than they have time or space to accommodate. Should they be candid, they would divulge that in terms of recidivism of offenders many of these programs do very little. The programs are not strategically coordinated to work together nor for that matter with the goals of the prison. The primary criticism however is that few to none of the programs have a re-entry component to assist offenders once they are released. Picture if you will the varied Faithbased programs that inmates may attend in a given week. Each evening they may be taught the exact opposite of what they heard the evening before. Is their addiction a result of a disease, psychological issues, or sin? The inmates may leave the program having gained some insight into their problems only to return to their living unit where they must guard themselves and their feelings. Consequently they complete their time in prison never dealing with the issues at hand, nothing has changed and return to the same environment they left with no new skills to assist them as they transition back into the community. No wonder the national recidivism rate is approximately 70%! The Faithbased Re-Entry Initiative, as the model is called, will consist of a separate living unit on which the inmates who volunteer for the program will live. The living unit will become a "safe" community in which they may reacquaint themselves with who they truly are and begin to "practice" how to live a socially acceptable life while still in confinement. Volunteers and staff may then provide a strategic intervention when necessary, as they are working together and focused upon a manageable number of program participants. 90% of the inmates in the program have 2 years before release eligibility. 10% are serving longer sentences. During the recruitment event held at the prison inmates are be informed that this is a Christian Faithbased re-entry program and that to be eligible they must volunteer to participate in all of the offered curriculum. They do not have to be Christian to volunteer nor do they have to have a conversion experience to participate in re-entry services upon release. It should be noted that there is also a component of the program in which families of the inmates will be asked to participate. Participation by the families is not mandatory but preferred. These components may be in-prison participation in curriculum with the inmates, church support prior to the inmates release and/or post-release referral services.
Alpha USA Address
1635 Emerson Lane
Naperville, IL
United States

Past Companies

Alpha USAHead of Social Media and Channels
Trinity International UniversityAdmissions Counselor

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