Forbes Magazine is hardly a haunt of bleeding heart lefties and this piece by Walter Pavlo isn’t brimming with the milk of human kindness.  Pavlo writes for Forbes about white collar crime and talks primarily to business groups.  He thinks federal prisoners, who do not benefit from parole, ought to get 128 days of good time per year instead of the measly 54 days the federal system presently allows.  If prisoners could cut their sentences by one-third by acting like model prisoners, a lot of them would.  Moreover, when they return to the free world, as 97% of them will, they will be better prepared for what lies ahead.

The idea of radically reducing the prison population makes sense even if you don’t care about the human dynamics of the issue.  It saves tax payer money.  But here’s the question; if we don’t have jobs for these people, and if we refuse to hire ex-offenders with marketable skills, what’s to keep them from re-offending?  It will take a combination of compassion and common sense to answer this question.  If there is no work for felons in the free world we must make work for them–and that could cost almost as much as locking everybody up for everything.   (more…)