Amachi-Break the Cycle of New Jersey is a statewide program that seeks to provide mentors to the children of incarcerated parents. We are a one-to-one, community based mentoring program. Our goal is to introduce a postive, caring adult figure into the life of a child who has a parent who is incarcerated. Our mentors do not replace the parent who is incarcerated; the mentor is someone that the child can spend time with and rely on. We ask all of our mentors to commit to spending 2-3 hours per week with the child for a minimum of 18 months. 
    
        According to Public and Private Ventures of Philadelphia, children with an incarcerated parent are six times more likely than their peers to be involved in the criminal justice system and 70% of all children who have an incarcerated parent will be involved in the criminal justice system at some point in their lives. While it is hard to track these children, estimates state that there are 62,000 children across the state of New Jersey who have one or both parents incarcerated. Mentoring relationships are proven to help these children beat the odds. It is our hope that our efforts will help to break the cycle of intergenerational incarceration.

"I went into a prison and saw a grandfather, a father and a grandson, all in the same prison at the same time, and they told me that they met for the first time in prison. When I was about to leave, the grandson pulled me aside and told me that he too had a son who he had not seen, and he presumed he would meet for the first time in prison also... it is possible to have four generations in prison at the same time."
-Dr. W. Wilson Goode, Sr.