U.S Prisons: Myth Vs. Mayhem

The article “U.S Prisons: Myth Vs. Mayhem” is about the truth about prison and how much money we spend on each inmates and penal institutions. I’m amazed on how much money they spend on each inmate because all that money shouldn’t go towards them it should go to schools that are poorly funded. The government spends about $4 billion a year just operating these penal institutions when education is far more important than these criminals. All this money is going to waste because inmates are killing each other everyday and it is recorded that 100 inmates are killed each year. Prison should help all these criminals rehabilitate so they wouldn’t come back, but instead it became an everyday war against inmates, gangs, and guards. The best solution for dealing with gang members is not prison because they’ll just learn more about gang life and other rival gang members while they’re in prison. In my opinion the best solution for gang members is to do something similar to what Father Greg is doing and helping them have another chance at changing their life around. The most interesting thing I learned from this article was that prison will only harden an inmates antisocial tendencies and it will reinforce his motives to act on them. I just find it very confusing that our government will spend around $4 billion on penal institutions and will not spend that much money on our schools.