Wasted Tax Dollars For Wasted Time Served...California's Great Prison Travesty and Missed Opportunity
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Incarceration without education is just doing time.
The minimum prison sentence is usually one to three years. Parole, following prison is another one to three years. This is a lot of mandated, judge-imposed time to get someone’s attention. Breaking rocks and boulders or napping on one’s bunk bed is not the solution. Teaching someone vocational skills, helping the offender to obtain a GED, if they have not completed high school, addressing serious problems with alcohol and drug addiction problems... is. A clean and sober lifestyle, coupled with credentials to gain legal employment, literally changes people lives.
Every state in
Most prison programs have been successful in other prisons in the past. They usually provide an attempt at introducing the inmate to the Twelve Steps and other successful AA and NA basic self-help disciplines. These services are usually minimal and not readily accessible to all inmates due to facilitation restraints and constrained budgets.
The chief priority at any prison is security. The largest group of personnel are Corrections Officers. This is understandable, but it is also unbalanced. It creates a powerful resource and opportunity bridled to mediocre work and diminished advantage for the low-skilled and under-schooled inmate population.
The prison scenario described is all too pervasive and typical in today’s prisons. This book attempts to describe and help fix what can only be described as a great travesty and missed opportunity.
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About the Book
“Wasted Tax Dollars For Wasted Time Served...
State and Federal budgets are quite ample and obvious for brick, mortar and fencing; but very scarce for educational programs and credentialed teachers to help rehabilitate those citizens who have failed in society. Lock them up, warehouse them, don’t beat them, but don’t aid them in their meandering journey to shame, no hope, and sometimes to a basically clueless existence of what is happening in this world and their unhappy lives.
“Grandma was a prostitute; mama was a prostitute; and I am a prostitute. We’re okay. I just got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time!” The male says “I made more in one drug deal than my old man made in a whole year!” Twisted value systems; No value systems is what this book is about.
Budget restrictions and high costs are always to blame. But there are great opportunities in the prison to rehabilitate and save our fellow Americans who have lost their way. It starts with Education, Education and more Education. They can’t get too much!
About the Author
Dan O’Farrell is the on-site coordinator and Education Counselor for the LA County Parole Services Network at the
Mr. O’Farrell holds a BA Degree from the