Women in Prison

? What would happen if there were no distinction for prisons among the groups previously mentioned? Prisoners are predominantly poor minorities with limited prospects. When

they are not in prison, they are likely to be found living in the densest, poorest

urban neighborhoods where crime and substance abuse flourish. They live there

because that is where their families and friends live; most of them lack the resources

to move somewhere else even if they wanted to separate themselves

from underclass culture and start new lives. If America had a caste system,

prisoners would be on the bottom level, even without one final impediment to

moving upward toward mainstream society: a felony record. Many job opportunities

that are open to others will be closed to them because of their criminal

records. Would you hire an armed robber to work in your store? A man convicted

of sexual assault to do maintenance work in your apartment complex? A

drug addict to work in a hospital? A murderer to work in a child care center or

a nursing home? When you look at where prisoners came from and what they

have to return to when they get out, the interesting thing is not that half of them

end up back in prison within five years, either on new convictions or as parole

violators. The interesting thing is that half of them do not come back. We should

probably spend more time looking into the successes of ex-prisoners (or at least

at how half of them manage to avoid reincarceration) rather than continuing to

reexamine the failures of the ones who keep returning to prison. For most of

these men, prison is a normal life experience.

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