Word: prison
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...many observers agree, never the best use of taxpayer money. And now, with so many states facing major budget crises, it looks like it won't continue at the same pace much longer. California's prisons are so overcrowded and underfunded that a federal judge recently ruled that the state must release roughly a third of its 158,000 prisoners by 2012. The New York State legislature is close to scrapping the draconian Rockefeller drug laws that, by imposing mandatory sentences rather than rehab treatment, have kept many otherwise law-abiding drug users in prison for years. Other states, such...
More than two-thirds of former inmates are packed off to prison again within three years, but about half of these are due to technical violations like not reporting in time to parole officers or failing drug tests. Parole and probation officers are typically funded just enough to be able to detect violations but not enough to offer help, say, for drug rehabilitation. This revolving door is very expensive; it adds $1 billion a year in costs to California's overburdened penal system...
...Opportunities in lower Manhattan helps hundreds of inmates each year acquire basic skills and find employment while earning an income doing maintenance work on public buildings; close to 13,000 former inmates have found jobs through the organization, and simply enrolling there cuts the chances of landing back in prison by half. "Our people are usually in the back of the line for jobs, but [in the current economy] that line just got a lot longer," says CEO and executive director Mindy Tarlow, who notes that it is taking twice as many calls these days vs. the pre-recession days...
...will soon be working with about 5,000 people a year, up from about 3,500 now. "I'd be in a problem situation or maybe even dead if it weren't for Fortune Society," says Victor Chapman, 44, a Castle resident who served 3½ years in prison for assault (committed to support a crack habit) but who now appears at college literature courses to talk about the Society's therapeutic oral-history project that is helping him write his autobiography. (Read TIME's 1971 cover story about Attica prison...
Supporting programs like these should be a no-brainer; they have a much better chance of keeping people out of prison for good, and they do so for a lot less money than prison would cost the state. That's the idea behind the New York Justice Corps pilot program, in which $4.8 million is being spent in the South Bronx and the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn to fund 275 young offenders (18-to-24-year-olds) working to restore community centers and weatherize homes over two years. "We are making an investment in the community but also helping...