Educate the inmates

Know what a Bactrian camel is? It’s a horse that was designed by a committee. Why do I say that? Well, Lord Asa is inordinately fond of committees—and in many cases gets comparable results.

The prison overpopulation problem? Fairly simple; it’s a business folks make money from. They don’t want to kill that golden goose. It seems most who think like Asa and Leslie Rutledge see prison as the proper place for people they don’t like, and do not really lose any sleep over long sentences and executions. A large part of prisoners are there essentially due to ignorance and lack of education or of any training to do decent-paying work. Ask most Republicans and many Democrats whether they’d spend money schooling convicts and most would be against it. But ignorance got most prisoners there and if they’re released as ignorant as they were going in, they’ll be back in short order. They did what they did in most cases to survive. If they have to repeat it when released to survive, you can expect them to do that.

Basic math and a modicum of common sense will show we could college-educate most of them cheaper than we can imprison them, and have decent, self-supporting citizens upon release. Classes can and should be a mandatory part of their sentences. Might not work for all of them, but we’re missing the mark and costing the taxpaying community far more than should be spent.

Educated, trained citizens generally don’t cost us much, but we must change the old views and use the money we’re paying for prisons to enable the improvements these folks need in order to stop being offenders. KARL HANSEN

Hensley