How to Straighten Out Ex-Cons Apparently, we're not doing such a great job.

convicts let out from the prisons of 15 states in 1994 had been charged by 1997 with 2,900 homicides, 2,400 kidnappings, 2,400 rapes, 3,200 other sexual assaults, 21,200 robberies, 54,600 assaults, and 13,900 other violent crimes, not to mention over 200,000 car thefts, burglaries, and drugs and weapons offenses. Add in the crimes they didn’t get caught for, and the total is undoubtedly far higher.

This author has some interesting, and unusual, suggestions, including making work a non-negotiable condition of parole and pinning the jobs of prison and parole officials to the recidivism of their charges. It seems worth thinking about.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 7:28 AM