I will check that out.

while talking about it being a partisan problem. Figgers...

I suspect this means more of a push toward prison privatization-- private enterprise is so much better at this sort of thing, dontcha know...

Historically, every 25-30 years or so someone makes the discovery that what we're doing in prison is all wrong. If we lock 'em up and throw away the key, it makes more hardened criminals if and when they get out. If we try rehabilitation, they just fake it and go back to the life when they get out. The pattern repeats and we never come up with anything new.

Prison labor is cheap, and while we have few chain gangs around these days, stuff like phone banks and order filling, light manufacturing, etc., is quite profitable. Why let the state or county have the profits?

It's a carrot extended to prison reformers...only he has no intention of following through! Hard to believe that the same man who wanted to execute five men who turned out to be innocent of the crime they were charged with, is in anyway serious about prison reform!

And this will ensure that former inmates become highly-sought minimum wage employees"

but for different reasons. Liberals, Dems, etc want prison reform to keep it from ruining the lives of people who are convicted of things like drug possession/use. Republicans want it to keep from interfering in the lives of white collar criminals. I believe the Kochs are behind pushing this idea in Republican circles and, iirc, the genesis was the white collar conviction of one of the brothers.