If a member of the community is released it is said they go Elsewhere. The specifics of being released are not openly discussed and it is a concept that scares the young children. For someone who is old, near death, or an infant, it is a sad occurrence but not feared. Being released for repeated rule breaking is much more threatening.
Lois Lowry's The Giver is set in a dystopian society that is believed by most of its inhabitants to be a utopian society. Being "released" is mentioned many times in the book. People who make large mistakes or break community rules are released, and this is seen as being exiled from the community. Elderly people are also released when their time comes, and that is seen as more of a retirement or celebration of life. Members of society can also apply for release if they want to. Jonas, the young main character of the story, at first believes that they are simply being sent out of the community, to "Elsewhere."
Jonas eventually finds out what being "released" really means—death. People who are "released" from this community are not taken somewhere else, but euthanized. To make things worse, he learns this from seeing a video of his own father, a Nurturer, giving a lethal injection to an infant because he was the smaller of a set of twins.
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