Lacking a comprehensive strategy to combat structural poverty, American society has instead relied on
warehousing people convicted of crimes in large prisons.
Until recently, these warehouse prisons have lacked basic education
and job skills training and so, the people in prison come out worse off than when they went in. Even now, the
vast majority of correctional facilities do very little to actually rehabilitate.
The enormous cost of building, staffing and maintaining these warehouse prisons has become a more and more onerous burden
on state and federal budgets. What should have been done in prisons for humanitarian reasons
is now being done simply because rehabilitation is much cheaper than thoughtless punishment.
The vast majority of prisoners are returning to the communities
from which they came. Our choice is either to see that they
have every chance to be educated and learn a trade while they
are incarcerated; or have the whole society suffer as new
offenders are trained to be more effective as career criminals
instead by older offenders who keep returning to prison.
The Child [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Blog: Prisons in African Countries 2011
Texas Death Row
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