After an overwhelming vote in the House, the Senate on March 11, 2008 unanimously passed the Second Chance Act, geared to allowing states and local communities to help ex-offenders re-enter society and become productive members of their communities.

According to the National NAACP interim president, Dennis Courtland Hayes the Second Chance Act will get to President Bush’s desk and he is urging people to influence “the President to sign this much-needed legislation into law.”

In a statement he said “every day, more than 1,700 men and women leave prison and re-enter their communities, many of them are untrained, face serious substance abuse or mental health issues, and are homeless. It is because of these circumstances that more than two-thirds are arrested for a felony or a serious misdemeanor again within three years.”

Currently, ex-felons face the anger and mistrust of the society which seems unwilling to give them a second chance to re-acclimatize and become productive members of society. Many businesses refuse to hire people with a record which costs the country in general and taxpayers in particular. There is also a major cost to victims of crime. According to Hayes “In the last twenty years, the cost of corrections has increased by almost 700 percent,” asserting that “Providing new opportunities is a good investment in our communities, as well as the men and women who served their time in prison.”

The bill should provide roughly $180 million annually in 2009 and 2010 for prisoner re-entry programs and to stem the high recidivism rate. Currently of the approximately 700,000 people released from prison each year, 66 percent are back behind bars within three years. The money needed to support this phenomenon, has increased dramatically, bleeding the country’s revenue.

The bill will also provide in excess of $360 million over the next two years, to foster the return of prisoners to the society. The Second Chance Act will also seek to facilitate obtaining identification documents including birth certificates and social security cards for prisoners prior to leaving prison.

The law would provide federal assistance for states and communities to start programs fostering re-entry which would center on job training, housing, substance abuse and mental health issues.