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          Text Box: Current U.S. Statistics on Prison & Criminal Problems (Statistics Taken From The Prison Mission Association’s Outreach Newsletter - August 2003) The Bureau of Justice Statistics says: • There are 2.01 million people in U.S. prisons and jails. • This is the highest incarceration rate in the world. • There are an additional 4.7 million that are serving sentences on parole or probation. • That is a total of 6.71 million adults currently involved in the criminal justice system. (These figures do not include juveniles that are incarcerated or on probation.) Disintegration of the Family and Fatherhood Deficiency: • The number of children born to unmarried women has skyrocketed in the past 30 years and is approaching 30% in the general population. • The divorce rate in the United States is more than 50%. • More than 80% of prison inmates are raised with no positive male role model in their life. (Oftentimes when young men cannot find the acceptance they seek within their own family they will seek for it in surrogate forms such as gangs, drugs and alcohol. The general trend is that, for most children, the lack of a stable family life is a major contributing factor to serious problems as adults.) • 3% of the U.S. general population is in the criminal justice system. • Violent crime increased by 600 percent from 1960 - 1992. • In the 1980’s and 90’s the United States experienced a prison construction boom unprecedented in the history of the world, yet today prison overcrowding is one of the greatest concerns of those that manage the corrections system. Loss of Moral Absolutes: • Since the late eighteenth century there has been an assault on the concept of ultimate moral authority. The rejection of an absolute standard of right and wrong has snow balled for over two hundred years to the point that now most people in western societies believe that moral decisions are relative and dictated solely by their present situations. The Erosion of Personal Responsibility and an Attitude of Victimization: • Most of us are familiar with the famous lawsuits, such as smokers with lung cancer suing the tobacco companies, in which people have sought compensation from others for their own poor choices. The idea that people are not responsible for their actions, that their wrong behavior can be blamed on circumstances beyond their control, has become the norm within our culture. When someone fails to recognize personal responsibility for his actions he will not be inclined to change. As Christians We Understand that Sin is the Fundamental Problem: • As a nation we have turned from our roots, compromised our values and allowed our sinful lifestyles to bring us to a point of being morally and spiritually disoriented and we are now reaping the consequences of our ungodly actions. As Christians We Must Embrace the Fact that We Alone Have the Solution: • The typical response of most people to the social challenges our nation faces is to build new subdivisions farther away from the areas of perceived danger, to keep “them” farther away from “us.” • The Church, the Body of Christ, alone offers the only solution to the moral and spiritual poverty of our contemporary culture. • Until individual believers recognize that “them is us” we will be powerless to have any significant effect on the current situation.