CURRENT APPROACH FEEDS PROBLEM

The sad irony of the prison crisis is that our get-tough-on-crime stance is
actually creating more hardened criminals and increasing violent crime
rates. Nonviolent offenders are imprisoned with violent criminals, so by
the time they're released, they're more violent than when they were sent to
prison. Naturally, they proceed to go out and re-offend, and the vicious
cycle starts again.

We need to do at least five things to reform the system:

a.. Make a distinction between violent and nonviolent offenders and keep
them separated in prison.

b.. Make a two-strikes-you're-out law so that violent criminals can't harm
society again.

c.. Research the cheapest programs with the lowest recidivism rates for
nonviolent offenders and adopt them here. The focus needs to be on cost
effectiveness, not ideology. I'm tired of throwing my tax money away on
overcrowded prisons when there are cheaper alternatives that reduce crime
in the process.

d.. We need at least three different types of programs: drug treatment,
crime prevention programs for juveniles, and work release programs.
Juvenile programs prevent kids from becoming criminals in the first place,
and work release programs allow prisoners to repay their debt to society
and learn a skill so that they don't turn to crime when they return to the
community.

e.. Since poverty and crime are strongly correlated, in the long term we
need to give people access to family planning and adequate education so
that children don't grow up in poverty and ignorance.

Rebecca Brower

Montgomery