New Prisons or New Schools?
Posted on Fri Jan 26, 2007 at 01:51:00 AM EST
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The New York Times had an editorial yesterday on our ever expanding prison population that included the amount we are spending on prisons. It's now up to $60 billion a year.
After a tenfold increase in the nation’s prison population — and a corrections price tag that exceeds $60 billion a year — the states have often been forced to choose between building new prisons or new schools. Worse still, the country has created a growing felon caste, now more than 16 million strong, of felons and ex-felons, who are often driven back to prison by policies that make it impossible for them to find jobs, housing or education.
What's the solution? Use prisons as a sanction of last resort. Let's stop incarcerating the non-dangerous offenders. Let's end mandatory minimum sentences.
Tell Congress to pass the Second Chance Act providing support services to those leaving prison.
The Times offers more good recommendations:
Congress needs to revoke laws that bar inmates from receiving Pell grants and that bar some students with drug convictions from getting other support.
....Congress should repeal the lifetime ban on providing temporary welfare benefits to people with felony drug convictions.
The federal government should strengthen tax credit and bonding programs that encourage employers to hire people with criminal records.
States need to stop barring ex-offenders from jobs because of unrelated crimes — or arrests in the distant past that never led to convictions.
Sage advice, all of it.
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