It depends. I think education is a good idea, since most people in jail are not in for major crimes or even for violent crimes. What should be in jail in their stead are all the union teachers, educational union bureaucrats, and politicians who permitted and encouraged the teachers and bureaucrats to conduct a public educational system where a large percentage of the graduates in certain parts of the country were functionally illiterate, and others graduated with absolutely no job skills and unable to do things like math or even arithmetic, which would have enabled them to learn skills on the job. Plus the schools were so lax that they had no work or behavioral ethics. De Blasio just gave a raise to these teachers...in a perfect world, he’d be in jail now.
Prison does give us a captive audience and a chance to catch up on this. Put in trades schools (even get the crafts unions involved) and basic ed and maybe things will improve. I actually have met people who have come out of prison (depending on the part of the country) with a skill or at least the basic knowledge to get into a program on the “outside” and have taken advantage of it.
Some criminals should be put to death immediately because they are vicious; others should be locked away forever for the same reason; others will be in for many years but even if they were learning and doing something in jail, could make the environment less violent and less conducive to more crime; and others will be out in a few years and it would be beneficial to everybody if they could drop the aimless, unstructured life that got them into criminal activities and get a job with real people in the real world.
What you say is true. And what Newt is proposing would be productive.
Except that...
...we all know that a government bureaucracy is incapable of achieving even modest aims. I.e., would the Bureau of Prisons achieve a better educational outcome than the Public Education bureaucracy?
Yeah, this is the kind of thing that government should do. But can't do...
“I think education is a good idea, since most people in jail are not in for major crimes or even for violent crimes.”
I thought only hard cases were being imprisoned at this point (to control costs); have you seen the rap sheets on the perps of some of today’s criminals? Twenty years ago they’d still be in prison for their crimes; now they’re turned loose pretty quickly (if they do any time at all).
“What should be in jail in their stead are all the union teachers, educational union bureaucrats, and politicians who permitted and encouraged the teachers and bureaucrats to conduct a public educational system where a large percentage of the graduates in certain parts of the country were functionally illiterate, and others graduated with absolutely no job skills and unable to do things like math or even arithmetic, which would have enabled them to learn skills on the job.”
So true; I can’t believe the difference between the capabilities of today’s kids and their own perception of their abilities. They (and their parents) have truly been deceived...