re: #115 Dark_Falcon

It all depends. It sounds good— the education portions of it— but it’s all up to whoever is leading it, whoever the teachers are. The structure of a program matters less than the individuals involved. Certainly on its own its still helpful for the prisoners that have drive and motivation.

It’s got potential as long as the education programs are of quality and can be linked to continuing programs after an inmate leaves the jail.

Yeah. As CCA said above, the felony conviction is going to haunt them in job prospects for a long time. If they’re a white person, it’ll just make them slightly more likely to be employed than a non-felonious black person (American racism for the win), but if they’re black it really puts them into one of the least employable categories. We need to be honest and not blow sunshine up people’s asses about how if they fly straight now everything will be better. If you leave people no economic choice except crime, then only the most ethically pure will be able to keep themselves out of it.

We need to have much more robust ways of re-integrating inmates into society. Step one is not having so damn many inmates in the first place, by getting rid of stupid drug laws. Step two is starting programs like this in the jails that really focus on giving tools for success. But step three is, as you say, the continuing programs outside, where we can actually point the felons towards jobs and not set them up for an inevitable return to crime.