What about former convicts?

[question everything]

This morning I was reading a story about Homeboy Industries, that for years put former felons to work at a bakery and cafe it runs in East Los Angeles and now joined forces with the East Los Angeles Skills Center, a public vocational school that offers a hands-on program to teach the design, construction and installation of solar panels, to add former gang members.

And I was wondering: with so many people out of work, what chance to people released from jails have?

[Lasher]

1. That is a legitimate concern.

In a way every conviction carries a life sentence.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

2. I've read about cons

immediately committing another crime - a non-violent kind - so as to be able to have room and board.

This is America, and this is what is happening here today.

This is America.

[question everything]

3. Sad. For a while the "jail industry" was the higest growing

one in the country.

They are showing the "Shawshank Redemption" again which, in its way, showed the hopelessness of long life in prison.

[grasswire]

4. the taxpayers pay $35,000 per year to keep them.

And I'm sure it costs way less than that to employ them on the outside and stabilize them so they are taxpayers themselves and can care for their families.

[question everything]

5. Some years ago there was a debate about sending felons to school

was either high school equivalent or perhaps college degree. And many right wingers were hollering that they could not pay for their kids to go to college so why should they pay for convicts. And the same arguments that you are raising were raised then: that eventually, when they are released, they should be able to find a source of income and stay out of prison.

[grasswire]

6. follow the money

The "prison industrial complex" is a giant industry. I've been to the trade show of the American Correctional Association and can tell you that vendors, opportunists, and profiteers galore have made fortunes off the imprisonment of our fellow citizens -- many of them imprisoned for non-violent crimes or victimless crimes. Many companies whose names you know and trust are involved. They hire lobbyists to influence lawmakers to vote for tougher laws and sentences.

It's insane. California's school system, once the pride of the planet, has been decimated by the amount of money diverted to lock up drug users and petty criminals.

Does a community want parks? Schools? Culture? Or prison construction?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

7. In NE PA,

where I grew up, the anthracite mining industry went bust back in the early sixties. For a while, there was light manufacturing - plastics, ladies dress factories - and then they went abroad.

Now, one of the only employers is a great big correctional institution built there maybe thirty years ago. The whole area is a slum, filled with deserted houses, where squatters wait for the drug runs that go between NY and Philadelphia.

But, god forbid we should do anything resembling rehabilitation.

[Thothmes]

8. Thats strange, according to a lot of contributors to this forum

the California School system went to hell because of the property tax freeze referendum?