Decarceration initiative

Decarceration initiative.

In these tight times, our towns and cities are hard pressed to find funds to invest in our communities to bring to fruition the promise our neighbors have to realize life goals that together increase the quality of all of our lives. A potential source of such much needed capital could be gained through the transfer of funds from the budget of our penitentiaries to local efforts to improve educational and employment opportunities.

Every time a member of our society is incarcerated, it is a tragic failure for the individual and the family and community from which he or she came. The loss of personal liberty is compounded by the loss of revenue diverted from the finite capacity of our community chest to pay for the infrastructure of imprisonment. If we could create an incentive to keep people from pursuing criminal behavior, then there would be funds available to do other more positive things. But this point is seldom understood by those taken into custody by state institutions that seem utterly foreign and detached from the world of the average criminal. This initiative would make clear the injury caused when one person’s incarceration depletes the means to fund opportunities for people close to and including the person run foul of the law.

If we were to take a situation where members of a community cause the state to spend $900,000 on prison, and meanwhile the state spends $100,000 on scholarships and summer employment programs. What if this community were to decrease the cost of incarcerating its members to $600,000, and the $300,000 spared was transferred to the scholarship and summer employment programs? Then the motivation to steer clear of crime would originate much closer to home. Breaking the laws of the state legislature today yields little stigma to many in troubled communities. Some see jail time as almost a right of passage in a culture where the laws of the state are not respected as sacrosanct projections of the ideal moral condition for all to achieve. But might the community place a different appeal on those risking jail time if it viewed each arrest as one less child sent to college or working to landscape a lot previously overrun by urban blight? Even those utterly callous about the impact of their behavior on others could see the opportunity for their self to gain from programs that would be funded by virtue of a decrease in their own criminal activity.

When we look for sources of revenue for our local expenditures, one resource we should never overlook is the capacity of people to improve their own lives when the opportunity is presented in straightforward fashion. When people are encouraged to apply themselves towards fruitful endeavors, a sea of fortune raises an armada of boats, that left grounded would only serve as breakwaters against the invulnerable tide of life’s unending challenges. True leaders do more than simply promise to take care of other people’s problems. True leaders show the way for people to apply themselves to improve themselves by their own actions. In this regard, I am convinced there is a great bounty to be had by all of us by presenting an opportunity to exchange a life of crime for a career of constructive endeavors.

Sincerely,

John Kilian.