Securus Announces the Appointment of a Director of Recidivism and Reentry

DALLAS, Feb. 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Securus Technologies, a leading provider of civil and criminal justice technology solutions for public safety, investigation, corrections and monitoring, announces the appointment of a Director of Recidivism and Reentry.

"Too often, too many offenders return to jail or prison. State prisons and county jails are trying to tackle this ongoing problem and improve the lives of inmates and friends and family members. While significant steps are underway, Securus continues to invest significant resources to assist our facility customers with solutions," said Richard A. "Rick" Smith, CEO of Securus Technologies. "The appointment of Dawn Freeman as the Director of Recidivism and Reentry will be utilized to partner with the industry to find ways we can help inmates returning to society in a meaningful, productive way thus reducing recidivism rates."

So far, Securus has taken these industry-leading steps:

• Deployed an industry leading 150,000 smart devices, including tablets to bring education, content and technology into the hands of inmates. This represents an investment of over $20 million;
• Secured exclusive partnership with JobView to provide inmates with job searches;
• JPay, a Securus company, launched Lantern (2015), a technology driven education platform.  Lantern is the gateway to a positive, education-driven outcome. Over 180,000 inmates have access to JPay's education programs with over 3.1 million downloads and growing;
• Partnered with another leading technology provider that provides customized educational content to offenders;
• Invested in Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) in 2016 that has a proven long term positive impact on recidivism.

"Securus recognizes the various needs of all Agencies so we've been working on a portfolio of solutions that addresses the flexibility our Agencies require," said Smith.

Correctional education has never been more important – research shows that inmates who received education while in prison were 43% less likely to become repeat offenders.  

"Securus' new Director of Recidivism and Reentry will collaborate with federal, state and local agencies to combine our technology capabilities with their specific recidivism goals to bring real change - improving the lives of ex-offenders and reducing the cost of incarceration through reduced recidivism rates and new reentry solutions. It will be Ms. Freeman's work to insure that Securus brings the full benefits of PEP, JPay, JobView, and others to benefit inmates and all of society.

"Our long term support for the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP), as an example, is based on their results on recidivism reduction – which are spectacular. That is why we are strong advocates of PEP. Over the last three (3) years, PEP has reduced recidivism down to 7% for its graduates, or an 86% reduction versus national averages, and 100% of their graduates have jobs within 90 days after release from prison, with almost 300 businesses started by its graduates! Those are results that speak for themselves. We want to have all of our long-term facilities get those same results.

"PEP is a great example of what we stand for and are promoting at Securus," concluded Smith.

ABOUT SECURUS TECHNOLOGIES

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and serving more than 3,450 public safety, law enforcement and corrections agencies and over 1,200,000 inmates across North America, Securus Technologies is committed to serve and connect by providing emergency response, incident management, public information, investigation, biometric analysis, communication, information management, inmate self-service, and monitoring products and services in order to make our world a safer place to live. Securus Technologies focuses on connecting what matters^®. To learn more about our full suite of civil and criminal justice technology solutions, please visit SecurusTechnologies.com.

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SOURCE Securus Technologies, Inc.