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Baby (very baby) steps.
Feb. 16th, 2009 10:40 pmAfter my mini-rant about prisons on Saturday, James sent me this article about a program in Texas where they're teaching entrepreneurial skills to inmates.
It's . . . better than nothing, I suppose. It reminds me about articles about all the great rehab programs they have at San Quentin. And you don't need to have been a higher-up in organized crime to be seen as having "potential" for those.
What ends up being really depressing about these kinds of programs is the ridiculously low penetration. 69 people a year is not a lot when you think about how many prisoners there must be to generate 1,100 applicants. At San Quentin, there were about 200 people in programs, for a population of 5000. What made that second set of numbers more painful was that the inmates we talked to felt that there wasn't really demand for more.
But, like I said, it's better than nothing.
Numbers aside, there were two quotes from the article that struck me.
Yes! Exactly!
It kind of echoes the change of heart I had last year. Except I didn't quite think "just lock 'em up and throw away the key" -- it's more than I didn't think about prisoners at all. Then when I finally did, I realized that we were in a losing game for all of us. And it can be really losing for some, like the women whose chances of having a family are destroyed, and the nonviolent offenders who come out hardened criminals. For the rest of us, it might just be a drain on tax dollars. Which unfortunately makes it harder to persuade the people who really need to be persuaded that something needs to change. But the first step is to realize that these aren't evil people, they aren't different from us. They just made some mistakes, like we all do, or faced some bad situations, like we all do.
The second quote:
I always want to scream, "No! You're getting it all wrong! It's because you won't give these people a job that the recidivism rate is so high!"
I know, that's not the whole story. There are some who are incorrigible. And it's hard to figure out who those ones are, maybe. But... I don't know. Something has to change. A system more attentive to individual difference, a society that's more forgiving, something.
It's . . . better than nothing, I suppose. It reminds me about articles about all the great rehab programs they have at San Quentin. And you don't need to have been a higher-up in organized crime to be seen as having "potential" for those.
What ends up being really depressing about these kinds of programs is the ridiculously low penetration. 69 people a year is not a lot when you think about how many prisoners there must be to generate 1,100 applicants. At San Quentin, there were about 200 people in programs, for a population of 5000. What made that second set of numbers more painful was that the inmates we talked to felt that there wasn't really demand for more.
But, like I said, it's better than nothing.
Numbers aside, there were two quotes from the article that struck me.
"I didn't know any prisoners personally, but I thought 'just lock 'em up and throw away the key'," she says.
"I saw them as a waste of tax dollars. I was very brutal in my approach."
But Catherine then recognised that many were ordinary human beings who had made some serious mistakes in their lives.
Yes! Exactly!
It kind of echoes the change of heart I had last year. Except I didn't quite think "just lock 'em up and throw away the key" -- it's more than I didn't think about prisoners at all. Then when I finally did, I realized that we were in a losing game for all of us. And it can be really losing for some, like the women whose chances of having a family are destroyed, and the nonviolent offenders who come out hardened criminals. For the rest of us, it might just be a drain on tax dollars. Which unfortunately makes it harder to persuade the people who really need to be persuaded that something needs to change. But the first step is to realize that these aren't evil people, they aren't different from us. They just made some mistakes, like we all do, or faced some bad situations, like we all do.
The second quote:
He says many businesses would like to give felons a chance, but they are afraid of the risks involved with a 50 to 70% national reoffending rate.
I always want to scream, "No! You're getting it all wrong! It's because you won't give these people a job that the recidivism rate is so high!"
I know, that's not the whole story. There are some who are incorrigible. And it's hard to figure out who those ones are, maybe. But... I don't know. Something has to change. A system more attentive to individual difference, a society that's more forgiving, something.
