One more timely book

Sequoia in its print version has already reviewed this book, but it needs lots of plugging and then lots of people reading and acting on its suggestions: Beyond Prisons: a new interfaith paradign for our failed prison sysems. Written in good part by Laura Magnani, who has been working on this matter for many years here in the Bay area, on the staff of AFSC to deal with criminal [in]justice matters.
The book proposes that we recognize both how sinfully expensive prisons are, costing $30,000 a year to keep someone locked up and guarded, the same as a Stanford U education. Why don't we send more people to Stanford or less expensive colleges, so they can get decent jobs and don't get involved in drugs, car theft, burglary, white collar crimes, etc. The book's thesis is that reform of young people who get caught in any of these crimes, if we haven't prevented them by making sure everyone can get decent housing and naborhoods and schools and family life, with jobs for one or both parents if needed.
We must also offer full respect for Black and Hispanic young men and women and families, seeing them as necessary part of our state's economy as skilled workers in the future, not as handy arrestees to keep our prison guards employed with heavy sentences for crack cocaine sale on streeet corners, and a pat on the wrist for cocaine powder in college dorms, etc.
What helps people to reform [as reformatories are supposed to help bring about] or be sincerely pentitent [as Quaker- encouraged "penitentiaries" were intended to do, with cells like monastic cells for meditation and Bible reading and prayer. Seen much of that lately at San Quentin and the rest of our expensive prison "campuses"? Not likely.
But we could do more of what Oakland police dept. and others like Sherrif Hennesy in SF do to give first time offenders lots of help in trying out going straight, working with and in the system that pays salaries or wages, getting enough training so they can contribute useful service to other human beings in schools, hospitals, playgrounds, clinics, rec centers, etc. -- even churches and synagogs and mosques! It takes a lot of community welcome and support to those who "graduate" from whatever institutions we support to help young people become helpful citizens, and not nasty criminals, with alcohol and drug and gambling problems, and little or no family responsibilities to help pass on their adult values to youngsters coming along.
So let's toss out expensive prisons and create new ways for us all to help one another be fully welcomed members of our society, not lifetime lepers with an arrest record to haunt any job application. Buy the book for $15 from AFSC, or a bookstore or online. [Fortress Press, 204 pp, paperback]