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Piper Kerman on Incarceration Costs

By Steve Hall

Kerman posts, "Lindsay's Jail Life," at Daily Beast.  She's the author of Orange Is the New Black: A Year in a Women's Prison. While Kerman's essay is pegged to the Lindsay Lohan drama in Los Angeles, it addresses wider issues.Does all this misery add up to better public safety? While some people watch Lohan?s predicament with glee, it?s sobering to think that California spends an average of more than $45,000 per prisoner per year, a price the state government can ill afford. The American correctional system is unquestionably punitive, but it certainly doesn?t rehabilitate; a staggering number of prisoners return to jail or prison despite its horrors. There is little clear path visible to a different life for most of the millions of Americans behind bars, and there are huge barriers in employment, housing, health, and family reunification that are known to consistently trip people up in their efforts to go straight...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on July 21, 2010 (boomark / email).