An Alternative for Prison

America's prisons have been called "graduate schools for crime." It
stands to reason: Take a group of people, strip them of possessions and
privacy, expose them to constant threats of violence, overcrowd their
cell-
block, deprive them of meaningful work, and the result is an embittered
underclass more intent on getting even with society than contributing to
it.
Prisons take the nonviolent offender and make him live by violence. They
take the nonviolent offender and make him a hardened killer. America has
to wake up and realize that the current structure of our penal system is
failing terribly. The government has to devise new ways to punish the
guilty, and still manage to keep American citizens satisfied that our
prison
system is still effective.
Americans pay a great deal for prisons to fail so badly. Like all big
government solutions, they are expensive. In the course of my studies
dealing with the criminal justice system, I have learned that the
go...