Image: YouTube, courtesy of: BusinessInsider.com
Christopher Petrella is a columnist for Nation of Change. On BusinessInsider.com (which is a much better site than its name would lead you to believe), he offers a trenchant and insightful article about ways this country can reduce its burgeoning prison population.
He didn’t miss a beat with this article. These are the things we’ve been saying on this site, since day 1. I’ll give you his run-down list here, but I strongly advise you click on the link below, and read the original article.
- Replace mandatory sentencing laws with more flexible and individualized guidelines.
- Strategically reduce “three-strikes” laws for non-violent offenders.
- Relax Truth-in-Sentencing Laws.
- Organize against prison gerrymandering to ensure that low-income communities receive a fair proportion of federal aid.
- Make full employment a domestic policy goal.
- Eliminate the use of for-profit, private prison companies.
- Establish prison education programs and incentivize inmate participation.
- Provide incentives for employers to hire ex-convicts.
- Eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline.
- Support community policing efforts.
Entrance to the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-ways-to-reduce-us-prison-population-2012-10#ixzz28vpajEkZ
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- Nevada-CURE Documents Prisoner Abuses (deafinprison.wordpress.com)
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- Nation’s First Privately Owned State Prison Riddled With Violations Of State Law (thinkprogress.org)
- Too Many Prisoners (nytimes.com)
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