From Cal State Fullerton
With the Golden State incarcerating record numbers of bad folks and with the Gubernator finally coming around to the unsustainable and unsavory budget juxtaposition of state spending on prisons versus institutions of higher education, a historian in Fullerton offers an honor-winning glance backward at a policy option that he says needs reconsideration. He hearkens back to a soaking season, in which horrible pounding rains inundated Southern California, wreaked havoc with mudslides and evacuations and prompted some Herculean labors by some surprising heroes of that time -- prison laborers. Why must California warehouse and isolate wrong-doers in giant, costly complexes instead of letting them work in constructive fashion to rehabilitate themselves and pay off their debts to society, instead of taxpayers drowning in indebtedness to support them, the historian asks, noting that the state once had a model prison system replete with convict work on forests, fire-fighting, conservation and disaster relief?
History offers important lessons on putting prisoners to valued work, scholar says
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