In his Jan. 23 column "Sen. Brubaker busy doing your business", Jeff Hawkes reports: "Brubaker expressed a particular interest in wanting to know if prison reform could result in savings without jeopardizing public safety."
WATCHDOG: That is for sure. As NewsLanc's recent article on the Justice & Mercy organization described, some prisoners who are eligible for probation cannot leave prison because they have no acceptable place to reside. And if they don't have a place to go to at the end of their sentence, they are re-arrested as they leave prison. Talk about Catch 22!
Considering that the USA has well over two million people incarcerated, the highest proportion per thousand of any nation in the world, and many for crimes as innocuous as smoking marijuana, there seems to be room for releasing hundreds of thousands of harmless individuals.
Except for the luck of the draw, Barrack Obama and George W. Bush would likely be two of them, as well as at least 20% of the U. S. adult population.
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Watchdog, the media criticism and analysis column at Newslanc.com.
