The Altar House

Causes: Correctional Facilities, Crime & Law, Half-Way Houses for Offenders & Ex-Offenders, Inmate Support, Prison Alternatives

Mission: Because of the dramatic increase in the number of females in the criminal justice system during the past few years and a need for gender specific services have prompted us to focus in this area as these are our mothers, sisters, grandmothers, aunts, etc. Establishing effective correctional strategies for women offenders is a nationwide growing concern. The number of female inmates Federal and State have risen considerably more than the increase in males. More and more women have joined the ranks of those behind bars or under criminal justice supervision in our communities. This Program Focus describes Preparing Released Offenders Pursuing Success (P.R.O.P.S.),A Division of Americans United for the Success of African Americans, Inc. (AUSAA), a non profit organization in Portland, Oregon that will offer a broad array of institution and community-based services to women offenders (i.e., women in prisons and jails, women on probation and parole, and ex-offenders). Though P.R.O.P.S. has not been evaluated by an independent source, our program address many of the critical issues identified in our profile above. Through our own services and by linking female ex-offenders with other providers, P.R.O.P.S. offers support, education, housing assistance, employment assistance, transportation assistance, motivatonal services, skills-building, counseling and other support to the released women, their children and families. While researching gender specific services for women, we discovered that women offenders and their families were precluded from being well served by agencies mandated to deal with issues that women offenders present, homelessness, HIV, AIDS, etc. P.R.O.P.S. has, carefully, studied funding opportunities that would support the creation of programs to address the diverse concerns of women offenders and provide opportunities for women to overcome the obstacles that they face on their journey to come back from a fall into the criminal justice system.