Every April 15th, Americans everywhere reluctantly file their taxes and give back to the government who then allocates those taxes accordingly. The thought is that our taxes will be used to better our country. However, of the nearly one hundred billion dollars taxpayers spend on prisons every year, not even 1% of it goes to rehabilitating criminals so they won’t return to the lives of crime that got them there in the first place.

Maybe that doesn’t seem like a problem, but when you look at the fact that 78.8% of all vehicle thieves return to their cells after being released, 77.4% of property thieves are rearrested and 2.5% of rapists are arrested for rape again within only three years of being released, it becomes obvious that something needs to be done to solve this problem.

Thankfully, Car Angel is leading the charge to make those changes in the prison population. Every year, Car Angel releases a new book into the prison population that inspires prisoners to make a change in themselves and encourages them never to return to the lives that brought them to prison in the first place.

This year, Car Angel has donated over 200,000 books to our Federal and State prisons and the response has been great! Not only have we saved the taxpayers an estimated $16,000,000 with our books, but letters have also poured in from inmates and chaplains alike expressing their gratitude and requesting that we send them more material.

Below is an excerpt from Death Sentence, just one of the many books that have graced the walls of our prisons. Read the passage and let the words themselves show you why these books make such a difference.