Florida Inmate Released From Prison After 15 Years Behind Bars

On January 30, the Criminon Florida chapter held its annual kick-off event to ring in another year of stopping the revolving door of recidivism and mass incarceration in Florida. The number of incarcerated prisoners has gone down in Florida from 148,644 in early 2020 to 133,615 in the spring of 2021.

The Florida chapter of Criminon, an international criminal rehabilitation program, contributed to the continuously decreasing number of incarcerated in November 2021, when an inmate was released from prison after completing Criminon’s program.

Criminon (which means “no crime”) is a criminal rehabilitation program based on the technologies developed by L. Ron Hubbard to help convicts recover pride and self-esteem. Criminon Florida has an office right on Fort Harrison Avenue, in Clearwater. Its volunteers deliver correspondence courses to prisoners all over the state as well as weekly seminars in Tampa Bay area prisons.

“It was truly overwhelming,” said Criminon program graduate Justin Foust on getting out of prison. Foust was released from prison in November 2021 after serving a 15 year sentence, and had already been in and out of prison four prior to that.
Foust did other rehabilitation programs while incarcerated. “Did I put those things I learned to use?” said Foust. “I mean, I learned it and got the certificate and the teacher said I’d been there and done it, but I didn’t use them for my self-betterment. I didn’t use the tools that I learned when I got out so I went right back to the old stuff. And I wanted to go back to the old stuff I was doing.”

When Foust was sentenced in 2006, reality came crashing in. “I was 36 and I realized that I wasn’t going to get out until I was 51.” Then Foust found the Criminon program in 2008. Compared to the other criminal rehabilitation programs Foust did, he said what was different about Criminon was “There was no church or higher power aspect. Criminon didn’t mention any of that.
This was about working on you solely and it gave you the guide through the course work to tear down that old you and build a solid foundation of proper principles and ideas. It was all about you and getting you right.”

Foust started the Criminon program at Columbia Correctional Institution in northern Florida and completed the whole program in 18 months. “Once I completed the Criminon program I started putting those new thoughts and ideas and ways of life into practice and it really made a difference,” said Foust. He realized during his life of crime, “You don’t think about the damage that you’re doing to other people in society and what you are doing to your family.” He also observed that, “People don’t realize once you go to prison your family goes to prison with you.”

The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration according to The Sentencing Project, a national nonprofit organization advocating an end to mass incarceration. The national nonprofit organization We Got Us Now, which raises awareness of the impact of mass incarceration on children and young adults, reports there are over 10 million children in the U.S. who have experienced parental incarceration.

Overall, the incarceration rate in the U.S. has dropped dramatically since 2008. The most recent and available statistics from the Vera Institute of Justice, an independent national nonprofit research and policy organization explains the issue: the U.S. incarceration rate went from 23 percent at its peak, 2.3 million in 2008 to around 1.8 million in the first half of 2021.

“The bottom line is you have to be ready for change,” said Foust of his experiences. “A lot of people feel hopeless and don’t know what to do. But I’ll tell you what, the Criminon program is an instructional manual to a better way of living. Bottom line. It doesn’t tell you to pray about it or hope about it. It’s you do this and this is the result. Doesn’t get any easier than that.”

Foust, who lives in Gainesville, is starting his new job, paid his debts to his father, got a truck, and is seeing someone. After his first few months out of jail Foust said, “I have no complaints on how it’s going so far.”