CLEARWATER, Fla., June 09, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Criminon Florida, a criminal rehabilitation program, held its 40th Open House at their nearly one-year old headquarters in downtown Florida on the 8th of June. Local businessmen and rehabilitation specialists networked and learned how the Criminon program can be used to help anyone caught up in a life of crime. The Criminon Florida headquarters is one of six buildings for humanitarian programs which were renovated and opened on July 11, 2015 in downtown Clearwater by the Church of Scientology.
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5bc2362e-9e26-4c38-ac86-17f8398ce510
The Criminon building features an audio visual display and exhibit, a seminar room and a volunteer center where 83 volunteers spend some 1,000 hours a month corresponding to over 900 inmates in 101 prisons in Florida. Some of the volunteers, the staff and even inmates in prisons conduct the program with groups of inmates in eight Florida prisons.
Criminon, meaning “without crime,” is based on Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard’s discovery that the path to true rehabilitation for offenders is helping each to “find out when he lost his personal pride. Rehabilitate that one point and you don’t have a criminal anymore.”
Internationally, more than 10.1 million people are held in penal institutions, 2.2 million of those in the United States alone. Of the 100,000 inmates in Florida’s prison system, nearly one in three released will be behind bars again within three years. And Pinellas County ranks second in the state in the number of juvenile arrests.
Today, Criminon is active in some 1,000 prisons and correctional facilities worldwide, with nearly 13,000 inmates enrolled in the program.
In country after country, wherever the Criminon Program has been instituted, government and prison officials have seen dramatic drops in recidivism rates—even among the most hardened criminal populations.
- In the maximum security Leeuwkop prison in South Africa, after inmates participated in the Criminon Program the number of violent incidents dropped from 1,000 a year to just one.
- In Karachi, Pakistan, recidivism rates among inmates in the city’s central jail who completed Criminon courses astoundingly dropped below 1 percent.
- A year and a half after Criminon courses were officially adopted by the Mexico City Penitentiary System, recidivism rates plummeted to 1 percent. The program has now reached more than 14,000 offenders across that country.
In realizing its mission, Criminon Florida has guided some 20,000 inmates through courses designed to help them make a fresh start in life as productive members of society. With its new headquarters, Criminon Florida is committed to still further increasing its outreach to rehabilitate even more offenders and slap the cuffs on revolving-door recidivism and stop it in its tracks.
Criminon Florida, 49 North Fort Harrison, Clearwater, holds an open house every Wednesday at 11 am. For more information, contact Sandro Lohmann 727-467-6965.
CONTACT: For More Information Contact: Sandro Lohmann 727-467-6965