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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Famous quotes containing the word work:
“We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a “life-work” of teaching, of social work—we know that we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. And all the time in the background of our consciousness rings the warning that perhaps the right man will never come. A great love is given to very few. Perhaps this make-shift time filler of a job is our life work after all.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)