Oh, don't even get me started...

I've worked as a jail house GED teacher, a counselor in an in-house drug rahab program and mayn years as a social worker worker in adult sericves, where a large number of my case load came from either jails or mental hospitals...

The system is backwards!!!

It is too heavilly based on punishment and not nearly enough on habilitation... Firgeu "rehabilitation" because that implies that a lot of olks in the sysytem were "habilitataed"... They weren't... You ain't gonna rehab someone who never knew anything else but to do dumbass stuff...

What we need is true "habiliiation" What we need is public/private partbnerships with businesses investin' in prison populations... What I mean by this is, like a GM 'er Magnovox, 'er, 'er, settin' up shops in prisons and makin' stuff right there in the prisons and teachin folks how to be part of a team and then when these folks get out they move on to the public side of the corporation...Workin' on the outside fir same employer they had worked for in the joint...

That is the blue-print fir change... It ain't gonna stop all recivitists but it's gonna knock the heck out of it... Most folks go back becuase they don't have a clue about livin' in the real world, they don't have no jobs and they jsut, fir the fact of the matter, give a danged about much of anything...

My hat's off to you, hilda.... Been there... The system ain't in a good place for turnin' out much in the way of success....

Bobert