There have been several TV programs lately about prisons. Most have “experts” who say that the present penial system is disfuctional, but do not make any sugestions as to how it can be inproved.The voters seem to demand both a
“tough-on-crime” & a prison reform policy be persued. Can the presen system be improved? How? Can we have both?
Here in California, we have 3 prisons that were built by voter-approved bond measures that have never housed a single criminal. Not because our prison system isn’t just as overcrowded as the prison system in every other state – but because the ballot propositions that called for the building of those 3 prisons made no provision for the staffing and running of those prisons.
This would probably be a good place to start any reform in California…
tracer, that has the sound of an urban leged to it… what ‘prisons’ and where? not that I am a skeptic or anything… 
Just as I suspected, many think that the system is flawed, but no one sems to know how to fix it!
Thank goodness we have California to provide a shining example of why public referendum is so incapable of governing a state.
We might start by doing more to prevent rape in prison–700,000 acts of rape occur on a daily basis in America’s prisons. I’ve got to think that most straight men, if subjected to this ona regular basis, will probably not come out “reformed” in any sense.
Bucky