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Slowing The Revolving Door

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 28, 2008

Regarding "Florida Prison Chief Offers Good Plan To Stop Cycle Of Recidivism" (Our Opinion, July 23):

DOC Secretary Walter McNeil's plan to create a jail system for nonviolent offenders serving sentences of less than 18 months is a sound one. To cut recidivism, rehabilitation programs must be expanded.

Sixty percent of inmates are illiterate, and two-thirds of them have drug and alcohol problems. Those are deplorable statistics. The homeless roaming our streets have similar statistics. Society pays the consequences of their limitations, especially when it comes to illiteracy. Study the entire developmental history of these people and you discover that their problems start in the early stages of their development. Neglect, depravation and abuse were usually their early history. Is it not better to get at the root of the problem rather than treat them after the fact?

What's better, jailing lawbreakers or having no lawbreakers to jail? The strategy of action should be the prevention of an unschooled and untaught populace, no matter how poor their family background happened to be.

ROBERT B. FLEMING

St. Petersburg

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