Pubdate: Thu, 25 Jan 2007
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2007 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?199 (Mandatory Minimum Sentencing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?244 (Sentencing - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Second+Chance+Act
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Pell+grants
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hea.htm (Higher Education Act)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)

CLOSING THE REVOLVING DOOR

The United States is paying a heavy price for the mandatory 
sentencing fad that swept the country 30 years ago. After a tenfold 
increase in the nation's prison population -- and a corrections price 
tag that exceeds $60 billion a year -- the states have often been 
forced to choose between building new prisons or new schools. Worse 
still, the country has created a growing felon caste, now more than 
16 million strong, of felons and ex-felons, who are often driven back 
to prison by policies that make it impossible for them to find jobs, 
housing or education.

Congress could begin to address this problem by passing the Second 
Chance Act, which would offer support services for people who are 
leaving prison. But it would take more than one new law to undo 30 
years of damage:

. Researchers have shown that inmates who earn college degrees tend 
to find jobs and stay out of jail once released. Congress needs to 
revoke laws that bar inmates from receiving Pell grants and that bar 
some students with drug convictions from getting other support. 
Following Washington's lead, the states have destroyed prison 
education programs that had long since proved their worth.

. People who leave prison without jobs or places to live are unlikely 
to stay out of jail. Congress should repeal the lifetime ban on 
providing temporary welfare benefits to people with felony drug 
convictions. The federal government should strengthen tax credit and 
bonding programs that encourage employers to hire people with 
criminal records. States need to stop barring ex-offenders from jobs 
because of unrelated crimes -- or arrests in the distant past that 
never led to convictions.

. Congress should deny a request from the F.B.I. to begin including 
juvenile arrests that never led to convictions (and offenses like 
drunkenness or vagrancy) in the millions of rap sheets sent to 
employers. That would transform single indiscretions into lifetime stigmas.

. Curbing recidivism will also require doing a lot more to provide 
help and medication for the one out of every six inmates who suffer 
mental illness.

The only real way to reduce the inmate population -- and the felon 
class -- is to ensure that imprisonment is a method of last resort. 
That means abandoning the mandatory sentencing laws that have filled 
prisons to bursting with nonviolent offenders who are doomed to 
remain trapped at the very margins of society. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake