Since 1996, the study shows, the Sunshine state has added more than 20 new categories of financial obligations to those accused and convicted of a crime. The fees are levied even on those who have no money and cannot pay. Increasingly, the result is a self-perpetuating cycle of debt — and sometimes further incarceration — for those re-entering society after prison.

The new study shows that the Florida legislature increasingly relies on “user fees” paid by indigent defendants to finance not just the criminal justice system but other state operations as well.

“As unemployment hovers around 10 percent, it is time to consider whether heaping more debt on those unable to afford it is a sensible and moral approach to financing state functions,” said Rebekah Diller, author of The Hidden Costs of Florida’s Criminal Justice Fees. “For many reasons, this is simply bad public policy.”

The report also raises key questions about the efficiency of the practice. Many of these fees are uncollectible, leaving the court system underfunded. In some places, collection costs are borne partly by counties and court clerks, and the adjudication of fee payments incurs even more costs.

Among the findings:
1. The Florida Legislature has eliminated payment exemptions for the indigent, thus demanding revenue from a population unable to pay;

2. In Leon County, collection practices resulted in more than 800 arrests for failure to appear at debt hearings and more than 20,000 hours of jail time alone in one year.

3. Florida routinely suspends drivers’ licenses for failure to make payments, a practice that sets the debtor up for a vicious cycle of “driving with a suspended license” convictions;

4. Florida allows private debt collection firms to add up to a 40 percent surcharge on unpaid debt.

Among the recommendations:
1. The Legislature should exempt those unable to pay criminal justice fees from legal financial obligations;

2. Payment plans should be tailored to an individual’s ability to pay, as state law already requires;

3. Florida’s Supreme Court should adopt court rules to end the new debtors’ prison;

4. Counties can save money by eliminating debt-related arrests for failure to appear and resulting incarceration in already crowded jails.

Florida’s increasing reliance on fee revenue coincides with a rising concern about policies that affect massive numbers of Floridians with a criminal conviction. Florida has the third-largest prison population of any state. Nearly 90 percent of the more than 100,000 people currently in Florida’s state prisons will be released, and, if past trends persist, nearly one-third will be re-incarcerated for a new crime.

The report also offers longer-term reforms, such as reconsidering legal financial obligations in felony cases.

For more information, contact Susan Lehman at 212-998-6318 or susan.lehman@nyu.edu .

According to a 3/7/10 article by Michael Lollar appearing in The Commercial Appeal, Tennessee’s DOC claims recidivism rates of 51 percent when studied for a three-year period; this compares to national studies that average 65 percent over the same time period. But the 20-year study by Correctional Counseling, Inc., a Memphis-based behavioral therapy firm, followed 1,381 inmates that first did time between 1987 and 1991. Their psychologists found that the recidivism rate numbers keep going up over time, and they’re higher because most other studies don’t count incarcerations after the three-year basis, nor do they count subsequent incarcerations that take place in other states, nor arrests followed by probation or parole in any locale.,

According to the 20-year study, which was designed to compare inmates that received “moral reconation therapy” versus inmates that received only standard counseling, 94 percent of the latter group had been rearrested and 82 percent of them wound up behind bars. For those getting the new therapy, 81 percent had been rearrested and 61 percent were re-incarcerated.

For full story, click here.

BY MARY WICOFF
Commercial-News

DANVILLE, November 08, 2009 — Even when they’re in prison, those who served in the armed forces continue to be proud of their military service. And, even in prison, they still have access to resources.

At the Danville Correctional Center (Danville, IL), 78 men are declared veterans out of a population of 1,842. The number could be higher, but some don’t share the fact that they’re veterans, for various reasons, such as fear of losing benefits, said employee Kerrick Kiley. Kiley is coordinator of the DANVETS group at the prison, which is open to all inmates who have been in the service. Most of the incarcerated vet prisoners served in the military during the 1980s and ’90s, although some are from the Vietnam era and some are from the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kiley said.

Kiley, who’s been coordinator four years, said DANVETS is about six years old. The veterans gather to offer each other support and advice, raise money for special projects such as Angel Tree, and sponsor activities. One of those special events was an early Veterans Day program last week, attended by more than 100 people. The event featured presentations, music by the seven-member prison band, speeches and a drill-team performance. The theme was “Pride and Passion,” and the bond of having shared a military experience was evident.

The main speaker was Randy VanVickle, veteran’s representative at the Illinois Department of Employment Security. He also coordinates the Illinois’ Incarcerated Veterans Transitional Program, another resource offered to veterans in prison. It’s funded by the Labor Department. At the Veterans Day program, VanVickle urged the men to focus on what they do have, not what they don’t have.

Danville has had the program three years, VanVickle said, and is one of seven prisons in the state that has it. He counsels anywhere from eight to 15 veterans at a time. The transitional program is open to prisoners who are within two years of being released. It offers 10 workshops on subjects such as employment, housing, education, benefits and others. For example, VanVickle said he was able to set up one man at Northern Illinois University, and made sure he had room and board.

Both Society and Veterans Benefit from Program
The program has been successful in easing veterans back into society, he said, citing a 6-8 percent recidivism rate. That compares to about 60 percent recidivism for other inmates who are released. “We give them resources they use,” VanVickle said.

Kiley said both the DANVETS and the transitional program have one goal: making sure the veterans are successful when they’re released. “A lot of these guys don’t realize they qualify for these benefits,” Kiley said.

VanVickle said some are apprehensive about asking for help, and they consider it a weakness. However, when veterans work with veterans — such as through DANVETS or the transitional program — they’re more comfortable.

Anoher aspect of the veterans’ group is that the men donate money and food to community groups. The DANVETS collected $320 for the Angel Tree, which provides gifts to children of prisoners. The men also donate money and collect food for the Danville Salvation Army.

“They did serve their country,” Kiley said. “They want to give back to the community and different organizations.” Salvation Army Capt. Judy Lowder thanked the inmates during last week’s program, saying, “I know it’s a huge sacrifice on your behalf. Every little bit helps, whatever you give — time, talent, prayers.”

By being in the military, they gained many skills, such as: training for different jobs, learning to work with a variety of people, leadership, discipline, a strong work ethic and how to deal with adversity. “The U.S. military has some of the best training in the world,” he said. “You deserve to be successful when you leave here.” He reminded the men that they still qualify for veterans’ benefits and there’s a network of veteran providers available.

After the program, he said, “What we try to instill in them is that they have these types of skills that only veterans have.” VanVickle is an Air Force veteran, having been discharged in 1974, and Kiley is a Navy veteran, with a discharge in 1979. VanVickle goes to the prison once a month for the transitional program and every other week to the Veterans Affairs Illiana Health Care System for the Compensated Work Therapy Program.

And with that choice comes the jail felony record. But for those offenders that choose to endure, about one year later these graduates benefit when the felony charge is wiped clean from their record. And that’s not the only benefit; they’re only one-fifth as likely to return to incarceration as the City’s average. Four years of Back On Track experience shows a recidivism rate of only 10 percent instead of the usual 50 percent or higher average return through SF’s revolving doors.

Developed by Kamala D. Harris, District Attorney, the program takes a full year to complete, and requires participants to “get educated, stay employed, be responsible parents, drug test, and transition to a crime-free life,” according to the DA’s article appearing on the Huffington Post website. That sounds easy. But what’s truly entailed is that they must “plead guilty to their crime, and their sentence is deferred while they appear before a judge every two weeks for about a year. They must obtain a high-school-equivalency diploma and hold down a steady job. Fathers need to remain in good standing on their child-support payments, and everyone has to take parenting classes.”

The program’s success didn’t go unnoticed. Governor Schwarzenegger just signed into law a bill that establishes Back On Track as a model reentry program for California counties. Other states are looking at the program too.

To read Full Story, click here.

Last week, after the regular activities of a weekly visit with a group of inmates in a Florida county detention center, Anthony, whom I had known for many months of visitations, hung back after the others left and stated, “Well, I’m back already.” He had apparently been released by the court a few weeks prior to that visit, but had been rearrested after a few days of freedom and now had to serve an additional two months. “What happened,” I asked. Anthony said, “Part of my responsibility after release was to see my probation officer at least once a month. I made a point of seeing her the very next day after I got out. Then she wanted to see me again a few days later, and I complied. And over the course of a couple of weeks, I had to see her two more times, at her request. That’s four times, and I only was supposed to see her once a month. A few days later, she wanted to see me again, but I simply couldn’t make the appointment. That night, she knocked on my door, and two accompanying deputies arrested me for not showing up the fifth time, so here I am!” Anthony was not a violent offender, but merely a poor soul that had a past drug problem, and was a victim of the current local probation system.

I relate this true case, not to illustrate something unique, but to point out one example of the type of foolishness or arrogance that keeps recidivism rates so high. Probation and parole play an important role in the criminal justice system, but many say probation employment should be limited to violent offenders only. And there are other ways to reduce recidivism, for example through more realistic sentencing alternatives prior to actual incarceration, or perhaps an alternative approach during incarceration to help short-timers be better prepared to avoid rearrest.

But, says one critic on the internet, the current system in some states, like California, “embodies a revolving door ethos: lock ‘em up, release ‘em onto parole, wait for ‘em to screw up and then lock ‘em up again. It has become a system that measures its own success by incarceration numbers rather than by the ability to intervene in people’s lives to stop them committing new crimes.”
(http://prisonmovement.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/california-court-says-enough-is-enough)

On the bright side, let’s look at what a couple of other states are already doing to reduce recidivism, as reported in the press and internet. Texas has programs to “put people with drug problems in treatment, which is much tougher than spending a short time in state jails and going out without treatment; also, the state invested in drug courts and programs for the mentally ill. And judges were given the flexibility to punish probation violators with community service instead of jail time.”
(http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/08/11/am-texas-prisons/)

Michigan similarly has “a state-funded effort to help former inmates get on their feet and stay out of prison. Participants having just been released from prison come to eat, hear presentations and learn about resources to help them find jobs, housing and transportation,” relying on help from interns and volunteers. (http://annarbor.com/news/local-college-students-assist-former-felons/)

Finally, there are private-citizen efforts aimed at reducing recidivism. Probably the most outstanding example is that of a non-profit organization called Getting Out and Staying Out, a brainchild of Mark Goldsmith, who won the $100,000 Purpose Prize for his achievements providing young offenders within Rikers Island prison with coaching, life-skill instruction, educational guidance and job-achievement support. Mr. Goldsmith will author a commentary on these efforts, to be highlighted soon on The-Slammer.org.

The report’s Introductory paragraphs follow:

“There are more than 2.3 million people incarcerated in prisons or jails throughout the United States. This figure that has been growing steadily since 1972 and represents a 600% increase over this period. The United States has achieved the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of incarceration in the world by enacting three decades of “tough on crime” policies that have made little impact on crime but have had profound consequences for American society.

These policies have been wide-ranging and include such features as an increased emphasis on drug enforcement, determinate sentences, and most significantly, a vastly expanded use of imprisonment. Simultaneously, there has been a diminishing of the value placed on the principle of rehabilitation that originally guided the nation’s correctional philosophy.”

The Key Findings of the report follow:

“• 140,610 individuals are serving life sentences, representing one of every 11 people (9.5%) in prison.
• Twenty-nine percent (41,095) of the individuals serving life sentences have no possibility of parole.
• The number of individuals serving life-without-parole sentences increased by 22% from 33,633 to 41,095 between 2003 and 2008. This is nearly four times the rate of growth of the parole-eligible life sentenced population.
• In five states—Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York—at least 1 in 6 people in prison are serving a life sentence.
• The highest proportion of life sentences relative to the prison population is in California, where 20% of the prison population is serving a life sentence, up from 18.1% in 2003. Among these 34,164 life sentences, 10.8% are life without parole.
• Racial and ethnic minorities serve a disproportionate share of life sentences. Two-thirds of people with life sentences (66.4%) are nonwhite, reaching as high as 83.7% of the life-sentenced population in the state of New York.
• There are 6,807 juveniles serving life sentences; 1,755, or 25.8%, of whom are serving sentences of life without parole.
• Seventy-seven percent of juveniles sentenced to life are youth of color.
• There are 4,694 women and girls serving life sentences; 28.4% of females sentenced to life do not have the possibility of parole.”

The report’s Recommendations for Reform follow:

Eliminate Sentences of Life without Parole
“Life-without-parole sentences are costly, shortsighted, and ignore the potential for transformative personal growth. The 43 states that have both life and LWOP sentences should amend their statutes to make all life sentences parole-eligible. The six states and the federal system with LWOP-only sentences should replace this structure with parole-eligible terms. An example may come from Canada, where all persons serving life are considered for parole after serving 10 to 25 years. Such a change would not necessarily mean that all parole-eligible persons would be released at some point during their term. In the interest of public safety, many individuals sentenced to life will serve the remainder of their natural lives in prison. However, this reform would provide that a decision on release be made by a professional parole board at the time of eligibility, taking into account a person’s prospects for a successful transition to the community. Such policy changes are gaining traction among key practitioners. In its draft standards, The American Law Institute, a professional body of judges, lawyers, and academics has called for the elimination of life without parole except as an alternative
to the death penalty. And, in June 2009, a federal judge in Pennsylvania reaffirmed a lower-court ruling that eases the clemency request process for Pennsylvania inmates serving life sentences which began before 1997. Before this time, pardon recommendations required a simple majority vote by the state Pardons Board before being passed to the governor for review, but the law changed in late 1997 to require a unanimous vote instead. The present ruling allows inmates sentenced before 1997,
perhaps as many as 3,000, to apply for a pardon under these earlier rules.

Eliminate Juvenile LWOP
As an intermediate step toward a wholesale repeal of LWOP, policymakers should eliminate JLWOP. The United States is the only country in the world that imposes JLWOP sentences, placing it in violation of international law. The committee that oversees the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights notes that sentencing children to life sentences without parole is…not in compliance with Article 24(1) of the Covenant.” And, the Committee Against Torture, which oversees the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, finds that JLWOP “…could constitute cruel, inhuman treatment or degrading treatment or punishment” in violation of the treaty.Many view the elimination of JLWOP as a natural evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roper, in which the death penalty was determined to be unconstitutional for juveniles because of the Court’s admission that juveniles are much more amenable to reform than adults. In Roper, the Court also recognized that there should be different standards for judging culpability for children than for adults; this reasoning applies to JLWOP as well. Efforts are underway in a number of states to eliminate JLWOP because of the growing awareness that this sentence is particularly inappropriate and cruel when applied to young people. In recent years, legislation has been introduced in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas and Washington that would allow parole hearings at some point during a juvenile’s sentence. Federal leadership is needed to eliminate JLWOP in the federal system and to serve as an example to states that this sentence type is unacceptable.

Prepare Persons Sentenced to Life for Release From Prison
The emergence of reentry as a criminal justice policy issue in the last decade has largely ignored persons serving a life sentence. Typically, reentry programs are provided to persons within 6 months of their release date and offer transition services in the community upon release. However, for persons serving a life sentence, their release date is not fixed and they are often overlooked as policymakers and correctional administrators consider reentry strategies. Additionally, persons serving a life sentence
have unique reentry needs based upon the long duration of their prison term.The failure to design reentry strategies for persons serving a life sentence neglects 1 in 11 persons in prison by denying them the opportunity to participate in valuable programming. Reentry and reintegration principles must be extended to persons serving a life sentence. Correctional programs can contribute to a successful release and persons serving life should be encouraged to access the types of services that will help them transform their lives and improve their presentation before the parole board. One model is the Lifeline program, first enacted in Canada and being considered in Colorado. In Lifeline, persons who have successfully reintegrated into society after serving a life sentence serve as mentors to those persons who are going to be released. “In-reach workers” help prepare individuals while they are still in prison for the challenges they will face and assist those who have been released to the community. The program has been in place for more than 15 years in Canada and 8 in 10 persons serving life reported the service to be helpful.

Restore the Role of Parole
In 1967, the President’s Crime Commission recommended that parole boards be staffed by correctional professionals rather than political appointees. However, more than 40 years later, parole boards remain the domain of political appointees and two-thirds of states lack any standardized qualifications for service. This has resulted in a highly politicized process that too often discounts evidence and expert testimony. Parole boards should be staffed with members who have a background in corrections or relevant social services in order to best assess suitability for release. They should also use risk-based
release polices that consider a range of static and dynamic factors including criminal history, offense severity, prison disciplinary record, and program participation while incarcerated.”

To view the entire 48-page report, click on the following link: http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_noexit.pdf

About 700,000 federal and state prisoners return home each year in America, and most soon commit more crimes. A 2002 Department of Justice study found that over 67 percent of released prisoners are rearrested within three years; about half, in the same three years, get locked up again. Recidivism—the propensity of ex-offenders to be rearrested, reconvicted, or reincarcerated—has long vexed policymakers. What’s new is that the current recidivism rate is high (5 percentage points higher than in the 1980s) and that prison expenditures are crippling state budgets. It’s unlikely that social scientists will soon agree on either the cause of high recidivism rates or a large-scale way to reduce them. But mayors around the country are promoting a small-scale response: government-run “reentry” programs that seek to assimilate ex-offenders into society. The programs’ approaches vary, but many adopt a philosophy called “work-first”—that is, getting ex-offenders jobs quickly.

Mayors have begun to experiment with work-first reentry for several reasons. One is that the older reentry model—an expensive cornucopia of social services for ex-cons, including housing assistance, drug treatment, family counseling, therapy, and support groups—hasn’t succeeded. Another is that foundations—and, more recently, the federal government—have been embracing the employment model.

A third reason is the success of welfare reform in encouraging work among the formerly dependent. During the heyday of welfare reform, people thought to be unemployable because of minimal education or poor skills were moved into work by a focus on job placement instead of social services. The labor market, it turned out, could absorb large numbers of new entry-level workers, and many welfare recipients were willing and able to work, once meaningful incentives were in place. Why shouldn’t the same principle apply to ex-cons?

It’s true that they face real obstacles to employment. An estimated 40 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons do not have a high school diploma or GED. Most have scant legitimate job experience or work history. Ex-offenders are banned from many types of work and are required to disclose their criminal records on many job applications. But employer attitudes about hiring former convicts often depend on whether they apply for work independently or go through a job-placement agency. Intermediaries who place and support ex-offenders find that businesses are actually more willing to hire their clients, in many circumstances, than to hire non-offenders. “If you get the men right as they are coming out of jail, they have learned to take orders,” explains Peter Cove of America Works, a for-profit company that places hard-to-serve clients. “What employers see are people who are willing to work, and frankly, who will do some of the jobs that other people are unwilling to do, such as heavy lifting.”

The mayor-led reentry effort in New York City, called Employment Works, relies on private-sector intermediaries, such as the highly regarded Center for Employment Opportunities, to place probationers in jobs that pay relatively well—$9 an hour and up. The city’s goal is to place 500 to 600 probationers in jobs each year and to achieve job retentions of at least a year. About 29,000 people are sentenced to probation in New York City annually, and about half are unemployed, so the program will have ample opportunity to test its effectiveness.

Chicago’s reentry program, run out of the Mayor’s Office of Community Development, also relies on private intermediaries to place ex-offenders, but its approach is different. Its scale is significantly larger than New York’s—it seeks to employ more than 1,000 clients each year—and it’s open to all ex-offenders, not just probationers. The city works to place clients in private- and public-sector jobs. For instance, it worked closely with the Safer Foundation of Chicago to get clients hired on city work crews, initially in waste-management positions. When waste management became more automated, the city joined with Safer to form the Community Ambassadors Program, which employs former convicts as tree trimmers and ground-maintenance workers. “We are giving back to the communities we once tore down,” says Abraham Ramos, one of the program’s supervisors and an ex-offender. “My crew feels good about going to work, and the work makes them feel good about themselves.”

It may not take a Chicago-level multimillion-dollar budget to run a reentry program, however. Mayor Cory Booker is dealing with a reentry problem of considerable size: every year, 1,600 or so ex-cons return from state prison to Newark, a city that (despite recent improvements) continues to suffer from high crime, high unemployment, and a laundry list of urban ills. When Booker came into office in 2006, the city faced a $180 million budget shortfall. So rather than starting with a big, stand-alone reentry initiative, Newark folded its ex-offender work programs into the city’s broader workforce initiatives: a service center at Essex County College, where at-risk populations get help with job training and placement; the One Stop Career Center in Newark, which identifies job opportunities and provides training for city residents; and a new Port Career and Business Development Center, where Newark residents can seek port employment. The mayor hired a small, able staff to assess the reentry situation. For several years, it studied other cities’ efforts, tracked what happens to prisoners once released, developed relationships with departments and agencies, and established performance benchmarks. This modest strategy held the city over until more funding turned up. Now, with a recent infusion of federal and foundation money, the mayor’s staff plans to put its research to use and implement an aggressive work-first initiative. (City Journal’s publisher, the Manhattan Institute, is working with the Booker administration on this project.)

Several random-assignment studies of work-first reentry programs are currently under way, and their preliminary findings are encouraging. For example, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation’s latest report on New York’s Center for Employment Opportunities indicates that those placed in jobs within three months after release are significantly less likely to have their parole revoked, to be convicted of a felony, and to be reincarcerated. True, most studies of recidivism rates are studying volunteer participants in work programs, raising questions of self-selection. Perhaps the kind of people who choose to enter work programs would be less likely to reoffend even without the benefit of the programs themselves.

The most serious potential weakness of work-first reentry programs, in fact, is that they are usually voluntary. Welfare-to-work programs, in contrast, required work from welfare recipients. The great majority of ex-offenders do not participate in work programs, and those who do are generally free to leave. While work is frequently a condition of parole, parole officers are seldom part of the job-placement process and are not committed to its achievement. New York University professor Lawrence Mead, a leading welfare-reform scholar, suggests a possible solution: get the criminal-justice system (and possibly the child-support system) heavily involved in work-entry efforts. Parole officers, like welfare caseworkers before them, could be invested in a “culture of work” that stresses the value of employment and getting ex-cons into the workforce. Mead recommends, as a first step, pilot programs that require work for ex-offenders and punish unemployment with tough sanctions.

In the meantime, though, mayors’ piecemeal programs deserve support. Ex-cons’ churning from prison to society, and then back again, exacts a heavy human toll, from the suffering of people in the low-income neighborhoods where crime is concentrated to the devastating effect on families when fathers cycle in and out of prison. City budgets feel the impact, too, from the expense of rearresting criminals and policing high-crime neighborhoods to the cost of social services (released prisoners often end up in homeless shelters). And the crisis is about to get worse: as federal and state governments feel the pinch of the tough fiscal climate, they likely will make cuts in prison populations. More ex-convicts will move from prisons into communities, and the number of potential criminals will go up. Locally delivered employment programs may not end recidivism—but they may be able to diminish it.

Kimberly Hendrickson is a freelance writer who studies housing and downtown issues.
The City Journal is a quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute.

According to an article in The Washington Times, over half of America’s states are attempting to reduce the growth rate in their prison populations by either experimenting with alternative sentencing methods, or by employing new probation and parole methodology, with some states doing both. Is this a revival of altruistic thinking? No, it’s the almighty budget battle that state governors and legislatures are tussling with in this current economic crisis.

For example: Virginia is looking at alternative sentencing for non-violent offenders; Maryland is making investments in drug treatment programs; Texas cut its average probation time in half and raised its parole rate; and New York is easing up on its drug laws. At the national level, the U.S. Sentencing Commission is holding public hearings on incarceration issues, and President Obama wants to spend $200 million on reentry programs.

The potential budgetary impact of such modifications can excite any politician. According to the Pew Center, average daily cost per incarcerated inmate is $79, while the daily price tag to monitor the same individual on probation or parole is a mere $3.50. As one of the states in the forefront of such planning and program activation, Texas added only 529 inmates to its total prison population in the two-year period starting in January 2007, instead of the projected figure ten times greater.

See FULL STORY by Keith B. Richburg in The Washington Times, July 13, 2009

Spending months or years in a prison environment is a serious, if not tragic circumstance. Much of the mission of The-SLAMMER is aimed at improving the lot of everyone spending time behind prison walls through exploration of reform, rehabilitation and recidivism issues. But perhaps a little humor too would also be helpful. Following is a portion of a rather funny comparison of life in prison versus a significant part of life outside . . . work. We hope all readers will enjoy it.

@ PRISON You spend most of your time in a 10X10 cell
@ WORK You spend most of your time in 6X6 cubicle

@ PRISON You get three fully paid for meals a day
@ WORK You get a break for one meal, and you have to pay for it

@ PRISON For good behavior, you get time off
@ WORK For good behavior, you get more work

@ PRISON The guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you
@ WORK You must carry a security card and open all the doors yourself

@ PRISON You can watch TV and play games
@ WORK You could get fired for watching TV and playing games

@ PRISON You get your own toilet
@ WORK You have to share the toilet with people who pee on the seat

@ PRISON They allow your family and friends to visit
@ WORK You aren’t even supposed to speak to your family

@ PRISON All expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required on your part
@ WORK You must pay all your expenses to go to work, and they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners.

@ PRISON You spend most of your time inside bars wanting to get out
@ WORK You spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars

By Just A Guy
The tides have turned and the language is changing as politicos try to salvage their political futures via a different spin on the old tune.
As the State of California budget fiasco lays the foundation for massive cuts in spending the results will be: early releases (eventually) for prisoners and even LESS rehabilitation, NO welfare, LESS education spending, and less aid in general. The long term result, unarguably, will be MORE people in prison and HIGHER recidivism!!!
Before I begin ranting about the above let me be very clear about something: I DO NOT believe in big government and the “dole”. What I have been through in my life has convinced me that individual success or failure is the responsibility of the individual NOT the government (I have been in prison, been released, and become very successful in the eyes of society and then came back because of my past rather than my “crime”). Government is there as a framework for order and is a necessary entity, but government should not be there as a crutch for lazy people, which it has definitely become (in my opinion).
What I envision is California releasing a bunch of people that have been ill-prepared by California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) for re-entry because they never entered any of the non-existent programs CDCR claims are available (a good portion of these people should never have been incarcerated in the first place). In conjunction with these releases, welfare will be cut drastically or eradicated, Cal Grant programs disbanded so lower income and disadvantaged people now have no way to pay for college, education spending will be cut and class sizes increased, and healthcare spending reduced to less than minimal standards, not to mention myriad other program cuts.
What will the result of this be? Again, obviously more crime and higher recidivism!
The people no longer receiving welfare, in many cases, will resort to crime in order to get money to support families. The college kids, having no way to pay for school, will inundate the lower wage workforce and take all the fast food jobs and resort to crime. The school kids won’t have any discipline at home because both parents are working two jobs to support them and there are no more after-school programs and with no supervision a lot will become criminals or addicts. The mentally ill will be kicked to the streets/abandoned and resort to crime. And finally a bunch of us will be released from prison and unable to acquire jobs because the welfare people (who now want to work) and ex-college kids have taken all the jobs most of us ex-inmates were able to get!