There is a simple solution that would contribute to alleviating our children’s suffering: Rehabilitate and educate their incarcerated parents. Instead of doling out lengthy sentences to felons, which simply serve to “warehouse” prisoners, while costing taxpayers millions of dollars, it would be more effective to teach prisoners different behaviors while in prison than the destructive lifestyle and behaviors with which they are familiar, and which led them to commit the crimes that led to their imprisonment.
It is expensive to send a person to prison, who, without rehabilitation, is 85 percent likely to return to prison. Money that is spent on “warehousing” a person could be better spent towards rehabilitation and education. It is a fact that it cost the same amount of money to house an intimate annually as it does to send her to Harvard University for one year.
Prisoner rehabilitation would not only save taxpayers money when an incarcerated person, after receiving rehabilitation, would not return to prison, but would benefit prisoners’ children and the adult world to which they will some day belong.
Without rehabilitation, children are torn from their parents and families, and it is certain that a vicious drug/crime cycle will repeat itself.
By Kim Mikesell
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