Catch and Release
The inevitable consequence of America's high incarceration rate is a high prison-release rate—and the prisoners getting out are more often more violent or antisocial than they were before. It's time to rethink—and rebuild —rehabilitation and parole

Every day in America some 1,600 people will leave state and federal prisons. Most will start their journey with "gate money" (from $20 to $200), a one-way bus ticket, and little else. Many will be drug abusers who received no treatment for their addiction while on the inside, sex offenders who got no counseling, and illiterate high school dropouts who took no classes and acquired no job skills. A lot of them will be sick: rates of HIV, tuberculosis, and hepatitis C are all considerably higher among prisoners than in the general population. Many of them will be obdurate "churners," who have already been reincarcerated for a new crime or a parole violation and are now being let out again. Only about 13 percent will have participated in any kind of pre-release program to prepare them for life outside. Nearly a quarter of them will be sent home unconditionally and with no supervision. And two thirds (up from one half in 1984), according to the Urban Institute, will return to just a few metropolitan areas in their states, where they will be further concentrated in struggling neighborhoods that can ill afford to accommodate them.
[more]

  thanks to wood s lot