Incarceration and Corrections Work
Nolan was prosecuted as part of an FBI sting operation called Shrimpscam to target elected officials who accepted illegal campaign contributions. After entering a guilty plea on one count of racketeering in the mid 1990s, Nolan resigned his seat and spent 25 months in a federal prison and four months in a halfway house. His experiences in prison changed his outlook and the course of his work.
After his release, he was recruited by Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries to be President of Justice Fellowship, the Prison Fellowship affiliate that works to reform the criminal justice system. During Pat's time at Prison Fellowship, they have formed broad bi-partisan coalitions with civil rights and religious organizations to support important issues in Congress. They successfully protected religious freedom for prisoners in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. A similar coalition successfully pressed for the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Nolan was later appointed to serve on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, a bipartisan panel aimed at curbing prison rape. Nolan also served on the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, chaired by former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach.
Prison Fellowship was a major force in another left-right coalition that developed legistlation to focus prisons on preparing inmates to successfully return to their communities. Called the Second Chance Act, the bill had strong bi-partisan support and passed both houses overwhelmingly.
Nolan authored "When Prisoners Return" a guide for churches and community groups on ways they can help prisoners as they make the difficult transition from prison to their home community.
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“Heaven has its business and earth has its business: those are two separate things. Heaven, that’s the angels’ pasture; they are happy; they don’t have to fret about food and drink. And you can be sure that they have black angels to do the heavy work like laundering the clouds or sweeping the rain and cleaning the sun after a storm, while the white angels sing like nightingales all day long or blow in those little trumpets like they show in the pictures we see in church.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)