Brave New Foundation: Beyond Bars

Source:Brave New Films- a man being interviewed for this documentary.

"Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is the country's biggest for-profit prison company and calls human beings in lock-up a "revenue stream." Don't let them profit off imprisoning even more. ACLU  

This video is part of the Prison Profiteers series produced by Brave New Foundation's Beyond Bars campaign in partnership with the ACLU and The Nation. Narration by Henry Rollins. Research help provided by Prison Legal News." 

From Brave New Films

I like this approach because rehabilitation is sort of like learning a different language. The earlier in life you do that, the easier it will be and once someone is already part of the criminal justice system, it's hard to get them out and prevent them from going back in. 

But if you can prevent so called risk at youth from going into the criminal justice system, through what's called crime prevention which targets risk at youth, making sure they are getting the education that they need, with things like extra tutoring that they may need or after school programs, again so, they can get extra help, supporting their parents so they can do the best job possible in raising their own kids, helping them get a job or a better job through job training, so they don't have to live in high crime neighborhoods with high poverty, we can prevent risk at youth from having to go into the criminal justice system in the first place.

Camila Orti: 'Juvenile Lifers'

Source:Camila Orti- convicted murderer Jason Golka being interviewed for this piece.

"A legislative bill in Nebraska is attempting to make the state compliant with a Supreme Court ruling that says automatic life imprisonment without parole for juveniles is unconstitutional.

Production and videography by Camila Orti" 

From Camila Orti

Just to answer the question of one of the victim rights advocates who was interviewed for this piece: juveniles don't have the same mental capacity as adults. They're not as capable of looking at the consequences of their decisions the same way as adults. Which is why they shouldn't be treated as adults. 

You take any hope of a 16 or 17 year old adolescent away from ever even having any shot at freedom in life, even 30, 40 years down the road, then what reason do they have to even continue on. You also make it more difficult to incarcerate that person, even once they're moved to an adult prison to serve the rest of their sentence because you've taken away anything that they could possibly have to lose. 

I'm not saying we should release juvenile murderers. I'm saying they should have a shot at getting a parole date, And even before that, they would have to meet certain conditions, just to be eligible for a parole hearing: 

confessing to their crime or crimes

being seriously apologetic about what they did 

getting their high school diploma and even a college degree while in prison 

and be able to convince the parole board that they would be able to function on the outside on their own and no longer be a threat to society. 

They would need to meet those conditions just to be eligible for a parole hearing, under my policy.

Salon Magazine: Graham Kates- 'Re-Inventing College For Prisons'

Source:Salon Magazine- some say prison is an education in of itself.

"Two ex-inmates are trying to bring higher education to the incarcerated, one maximum security facility at a time. 

At the height of the tough-on-crime era in the mid-1990s, prisoners in New York State seeking access to college-level courses were dealt a one-two punch that seemed to deliver a crushing blow to inmate higher education.

When then-President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, he revoked inmate access to federal Pell grants. In 1995, New York Governor George Pataki followed suit, eliminating Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) funding for prisoners in the state.

For Kathy Boudin, at the time an inmate of the maximum security Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, it seemed like college programs “disappeared overnight.”

“When college was removed, instead of having a line of people walking to school, we had people sitting up in the day rooms playing cards, playing dominoes, getting in fights,” said Boudin, now the director of the Columbia University School of Social Work’s Criminal Justice Initiative." 

From Salon Magazine

Because of the fact that we have such a high level of prison inmates going back to prison after they are released and in a lot of cases within a year of getting out of prison the previous time and in a lot of cases because they simply don't have the skills that they need to be successful legally on the outside, which means that society, meaning taxpayers get stuck with the bills of having to take care of these people while they are in prison and then, get stuck with the bills of having to pay for them while they are back in prison, because these inmates enter prison as criminals and leave prison as criminals, screw ups going in and screw ups going out and coming back in, knowing all of these things, you would think that society would get the message that there's a better way in how we could incarcerate our prison population then having them remain uneducated screw ups who repeat their same mistakes from the past that landed them in prison in the first place.

Some say that funding education and schools for prison inmates costs money and of course they are right. Anything worth doing does. But done well, it's cheaper to pay for that then funding things that aren't worth doing. Like inmates to remain criminals while in prison with no hope of making it on the outside once they leave prison and end up coming back to prison and once again being wards of the state. Which is exactly what prison inmates are: adult children who can't make it on their own and can't be taken care of by anyone and must live in an institutional environment to be able to function at all. 

If we give prison inmates the opportunity to improve themselves with skills that they can use once they leave prison, (something like 7-10 inmates leave prison while they are still young and healthy enough to work) so instead of having no hope of making it on the outside, we could empower them to get the skills so they can become productive citizens.

We could fund education for prison inmates through things like Pell grants and student loans that they would pay back while either still in prison or once they are out of prison. And also by putting inmates to work in prison with what's called prison industries, which would be companies that operate inside of prison that would hire inmates. And pay our inmates for the work that they do to cover their room and board. But it's just a matter of priorities, what we believe we should fund in this country.

Governor Gary Johnson & Sheriff Joe Arpaio: 'Prison Industrial Complex'

Source:Randy 7845- Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

"This is a clip from the film "American Drug War: The Last White Hope"

From Randy 7845

I think two things that we know that really don't work when it comes to prison reform, is locking up drug addicts for simple drug possession or usage, thinking that if we just take their freedom away, they will get their act together and quit illegal narcotics all together. And with all due respect to Governor Gary Johnson who I respect as a Classical Liberal myself, we know that prisons don't work either.

40 years after President Richard Nixon declared the so-called War On Drugs, we have the most drug addicts, even on a per-capita basis, of any country in the developed world. So we know treating drug addicts who are guilty of nothing other than illegal possession or usage or illegal narcotics, like common felons, doesn't work. 

We know private prisons doesn't work, because the private prison industry is a for-profit industry. Nothing wrong with for-profit, for the most part, but when you incentivize private companies to lock people up, even if they're no real threat to society, they're going to try to lock up as many people as possible, to get as much money as possible. And, they're going to try to extend the prison sentences of their current inmates, to get more money from taxpayers to pay for their prisons. As well as lobby legislatures and executives for more laws and harsher sanctions for people who commit felonies.