Studies have shown that inmate participation in education, vocational and job training, prison work skills development, drug abuse, mental health and other treatment programs, all reduce recidivism, significantly.
Social-enterprise employees earn wages and pay taxes, reducing their recidivism rates and dependence on government assistance. They also receive crucial on-the-job training, job-readiness skills, literacy instruction and, if necessary, the counseling and mental-health services they need to move into the mainstream workforce.
Certainly, by providing individuals coming out of institutions with ways to become productive citizens, we reduce recidivism. What that means is we reduce crime. There are fewer victims when individuals have options - when they have job skills, when they have life skills, we break the cycle of children following their parents into institutions.
At the moment I would like to emphasize the need for vocational training, for non-formal education in Burma to help all those young people who have suffered from a bad education. They have to be trained to earn their living. They have to have enough education vocational training to be able to set up respectable lives for themselves.
Our research shows that nearly 60% of recent offenders who engaged with a community-based alcohol programme did not go on to reoffend in the two years following treatment. Offenders given a community sentence including mental health treatment have also shown to be significantly less likely to reoffend.
Our nation has slashed budgets for education, job training, economic development, and drug treatment while investing billions in prisons and militarized police. A penal system unprecedented in world history has been born. Millions have been arrested and stripped of basic civil and human rights.
The bigger picture is that over the last 30 years, we have spent $1 trillion waging a drug war that has failed in any meaningful way to reduce drug addiction or abuse, and yet has siphoned an enormous amount of resources away from other public services, especially education.
I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.
My hope was that organizations would start including this range of skills in their training programs - in other words, offer an adult education in social and emotional intelligence.
Unfortunately, the elimination of incentives such as parole, good time credits and funding for college courses, means that fewer inmates participate in and excel in literacy, education, treatment and other development programs.
Vocational education programs have made a real difference in the lives of countless young people nationwide; they build self-confidence and leadership skills by allowing students to utilize their unique gifts and talents.
Children who attend high-quality early care and education programs before kindergarten perform better on assessments of reading and math skills and socio-emotional development. However, since early care and education programs are so expensive, low-income families face significant barriers.
Grit is not synonymous with hard work. It involves a certain single-mindedness. An ungritty prison inmate will mount a daring new escape attempt every month, but a gritty prison inmate will tunnel his way out one spoonful of concrete at a time. Grit
Education, work, and access to health care for all are key elements for development and the just distribution of goods, for the attainment of social justice, for membership in society, and for free and responsible participation in political life.
Studies demonstrate that as gaps are being closed between men and women - in access to education, in health, even in economic participation - the most difficult gap to close is in political participation. Somehow that sharing of raw power, political power, remains very illusive.
In my view, nothing would do more to reduce violence in American cities than genuine full employment - a job at a decent wage for every person who wants to work. Numerous studies have shown that violence increases with unemployment.
People say, 'I'm for job training. We can train people to increase the likelihood that they can be self-sufficient.' Okay, that's great, you're for job training - I like job training - but do you think the federal government should have 163 different job-training programs?