The Safer Foundation does not charge clients for the services it delivers to them. The reasons for this are twofold. First, most persons with records leaving jail or prison do not have the resources to pay service fees at this critical transition time when they most need services. Second, the Safer Foundation does not want to impose an additional barrier to the many barriers people with records already face when they finally make the courageous decision to seek help to change their lives for the better.

Philosophically, the Safer Foundation is committed to the importance of private/public partnerships because we firmly believe this is both a public and a private issue. The public sector is responsible for public safety and taxpayer accountability. Since more than 97% of people who are incarcerated return to the community, their goal is to promote public safety in the most cost-effective ways possible. And assisting individuals with a criminal record to find work and build constructive social supports are two of the most effective ways-and far cheaper than building additional prisons.

This is a private sector issue because their involvement insures that the work the Safer Foundation does is characterized by a focus on innovation, outcomes and a desire to improve the quality of criminal and social justice in our most precious American asset -- democratic society. Through this public-private partnership the Safer Foundation delivers benefits to clients, their families, the community and society-and better meets the shared goals of reducing recidivism and promoting public safety

All of Safer's efforts to provide employment opportunities to persons with criminal records promote self sufficiency and have a dramatic impact on lowering the recidivism (return to prison) rate for our clientele as evidenced by the Three-Year Recidivism Study 2006. This study found that the three-year recidivism rate for the entire cohort of inmates released from the Illinois Department of Corrections in 2003 was 51.8 percent. The recidivism rate for Safer clients who received Safer's employment services and achieved employment was 24 percent.

In other words, among all Safer clients who received job starts, only one in five returned to prison within three years of intake at Safer Foundation. The three-year recidivism rate for Safer clients who achieved 30-day employment retention was 22 percent, a 58 percent lower recidivism rate than the statewide recidivism rate of those released from prison during the same time period. Among those who went on to achieve 360-day employment retention, only 13 percent recidivated in a three-year period.