In the News Reform the prison-industrial complex
From Newsmax:
In an essay in the journal National Affairs, Eli Lehrer sets out an agenda for reform geared toward rehabilitation, and the conservative group Right on Crime advocates a similar program.Most fundamentally, prisoners should be required to do what many of them have never done before, namely an honest day’s work. Fewer than a third of offenders hold full-time jobs at the time of their arrest, according to Lehrer. They won’t acquire a work ethic in prison. University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Stephanos Bibas notes that only about 8 percent of prisoners work in prison industries, and about 4 percent on prison farms.…Ex-inmates out on parole or on probation should be monitored more closely. As Lehrer writes, “Transition programs should increasingly involve random, unannounced home visits, subject ex-offenders to round-the-clock electronic monitoring, require them to take random drug tests, and offer them swift and certain punishment for slip-ups.”
