All I want from Santa

Santa, all I want for the new year is a governor and legislators who fully fund job training for state prisoners that teaches self-employment skills and construction skills that benefit the state, cities and the public.

Santa, please help the Legislature see that supplying construction equipment and trainers to the prison system would allow prisoners to learn how to operate heavy construction equipment, how to fix them and possibly how to build them. Show them that teaching prisoners to do plumbing, roofing, electrical work, carpentry, car repairs and even computers allows the prisoners to learn self-employment skills while building and maintaining public facilities while in custody.

If this had been done years ago, I believe Arkansas would have cheaper, wider, five-lane roads now, and fivelane access roads on both sides of the freeways; deeper and wider waterways to prevent flooding; deeper and wider lakes with beaches; schools and other public buildings maintained, painted and expanded by prisoners at night, weekends and summers; more and better parks, and many other public parks.

I think taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for labor by private companies wanting to rip off public agencies for a profit when the state has an everincreasing number of prisoners. Inmates already operate agricultural equipment and build things, so this present is just a matter of funding job trainers and road-construction equipment.

Just remember, Santa, that young men built many dams, roads and bridges during the Depression as part of the WPA and CCC. If they could do it with now-primitive equipment, then so can our prisoners! KEITH WEBER Jacksonville