Providing jobs can end cycle of imprisonment

This country is on the precipice of ending the failed "War on Drugs" but apparently leaving the problem of recidivism unsolved.

With more than 50 percent returning to prison within a year of their release, most ex-convicts appear to be hapless returning to public life.

But the evidence is in. It's their inability to get a job, being refused by potential employers because of incarceration, an entry seen on all applications that seems to disqualify them outright.

Why not this: Convert existing halfway houses to places of employment rather than interim addresses that failingly attempt to reinstruct them on conventional social mores and accepted mannerisms.

Initially, with the cooperative relationship of penitentiaries and these revitalized passageways, marketable skills can be taught to felons before release, capabilities that can last for a lifetime.

Upon application for available work, all that would be needed is a certificate of successful completion, signed by the warden. No longer can he or she be refused a job because of past convictions.

What about costs and benefits?

Initially, costs could be afforded by the government. But in time, such an endeavor would pay for itself and eventually become profitable since equitable contracts could be struck with towns, cities, and needful businesses. Such an arrangement can enable such an enterprise to eventually pay back the government as banks did in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

But benefits may be enormous. No longer will ex-cons be denied a job, recidivism would be drastically reduced, prison growth would be stopped in its tracks, and the excessive billions of dollars already wastefully spent would be a thing of the past.

James D. Cook

Schaumburg