Recently ran into an article about censorship in prisons. I can understand people wanting people to have the harshest punishment for prisoners i.e. bread and water, because we float the facade of corrections being rehabilitation. I think we need to rethink some of the policies.
I know politician like to talk about how hard they are on crime. The public eats it up and it sounds good till you think about. In California an inmate's annual housing, costs tax payers $50,000. Once inmates reach the age of 55, tax payers can count on spending $150,000 annually. And yet, this same public/politicians will often quietly cut funding for afterschool care, early educational programs and the like. Most of of these programs when implemented have been shown to significantly reduce the prison pipeline. I for one don't think persons on the wrong side of the law should have a $150,000 retirement package in the name of "getting tough on crime." This sentiment is especially doubled when studies and people in law enforcement are able to connect the dots between afterschool programs/preschool and reduction in prison populations.
This leads me to the topic of question, prisons refusing to allow prisoners read books or censorship. This feels similar to the tough on crime adage. It should go without saying that a prisoner reading would be beneficial to the public outside of obvious materials that would be a threat, i.e.books on bomb making, escaping, survey of land surrounding prison, etc. It would be cheaper in many cases to put these individuals through college than to have them "rot" in prison. The more literate these prisoners are the less likely they maybe to return or to cause mischief within the prison. This is AfroTapp and that's my Angle
Talk to me. What do you think, do you think prisoners should be banned from reading Shakespeare, Harry Potter, August Wilson, Langston Hughes etc.?
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