About Us

Work to achieve the restoration of all the rights and attributes of citizenship among people in prison or jail and those who have been released in collaboration with other community and faith based organizations at each of the overlapping phases of the community integration process – the institutional phase, the structured re-entry phase and the on-going reintegration phase.

How it began

Citizens Against Recidivism, Inc. grew from the hopes a wife held for her incarcerated husband. She dreamed of the day his debt to society would be paid and he return home as a citizen. Citizens Against Recidivism, Inc. was also the hope of an incarcerated man who yearned to assume his place in the community as a citizen conscious of his civic responsibilities and ready to fulfill the obligations associated with those responsibilities.

Now

There are other wives, other husbands, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, and other relatives of the incarcerated, and those who are themselves incarcerated that dream of the day they will have fully paid their debt to society. They, too, wish to be clothed in all the rights and attributes of citizenship. If no one is there to assist them make their dream a reality, they will return to the life they knew before prison.

The Key to Success

Loss of citizenship rights . . . inhibits reformative efforts. If . . . (we) are to reintegrate an offender into free society, the offender must retain all attributes of citizenship. In addition, his respect for the law and the legal system may well depend, in some measure, on his ability to participate in that system.*

Citizens must be there to help formally incarcerated people take their places in society and with their families. The assistance we give those who attempt to redeem themselves says something about all of us. If we are required to punish, then we are required to make whole following its administration.

Delinquency Intervention Program

Citizens' delinquency intervention programming primarily focuses upon depicting for youth characteristics and behaviors that lead to juvenile arrest and confinement. /

Muslim Re-Entry Initiative

Citizens host the Muslim Re-entry Initiative, an advocacy effort for Muslim involvement on issues related to the return of the formerly incarcerated Muslims. This project is related to the 2006 Soros Justice Fellowship of our co-founder, Mika'il DeVeaux.

*Jeremy Travis, Invisible punishment: An instrument of social exclusion, in Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, March Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind, editors, The New Press, New York, 2002

*Data and information used for this summary were taken from the NYS Department of Correctional Services. A detailed copy of the report entitled THE HUB SYSTEM: PROFILE OF POPULATION UNDER CUSTODY ON JANUARY 1, 2007, may be found at

http://www.docs.state.ny.us/Research/Reports/Hub_Report_2007.pdf

*Data and information used for this summary were taken from the NYS Department of Correctional Services. A detailed copy of the report entitled THE HUB SYSTEM: PROFILE OF POPULATION UNDER CUSTODY ON JANUARY 1, 2007, may be found at

Send mail to info@citizensinc.org with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: 07/07/08

*Data and information used for this summary were taken from the NYS Department of Correctional Services. A detailed copy of the report entitled THE HUB SYSTEM: PROFILE OF POPULATION UNDER CUSTODY ON JANUARY 1, 2007, may be found at

Send mail to info@citizensinc.org with questions or comments about this web site. Last modified: 07/07/08

Send mail to info@citizensinc.org with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: 07/07/08