help for ex-felons

We need tot ackle the nexus of unemployment and crime in the inner city so that the men who live there can begin fulfilling their responsibilities. The conventional wisdom is that most unemployed inner city men could ind work if they really wanted to; that they inevitably prefer dealing drugs, with its attendant risks but potential high profits, to the lowpaying jobs that their lack of skilld warrants. in fact, economists who have studied the issue- and the young men whose fates are at stake- and found that the costs and benefits of street life dont measure up to the popular mythology: At the bottom, or even in the middle ranks of the drug trade, it is a minimum wage affair. For many innercity men, what prevents gainful employment is npt simply the absence of motivation to get off the streets but the absence of a job history or any marketable job skills- and increasingly, the stigma of a prison record.

It would be nice if the market could generate enough oppurtunities for all the innercity men who need them. But most employers arent willing to take a chance on excons, and those who are willing are frequently prevented by laws from doing so.

Government could kick-start a transformation of circumstances for these men by working with private-sector businesses to hire and train ex-felons on projects that can benefit the community as a whole: insulating homes and offices so they are more energy efficient, perhaps, or laying the broadband lines needed to thrust the entire community into the Internet age. Such programs would cost money of course, but, given the annual cost of incarcerating an inmate, any drop in recidivism would help the program pay for itself. Not all the hardcore unemployed would prefer entry level jobs to the life on the street, and no program to help ex-felons will eliminate the need to lock up hardened criminals, those whose habits of violence are too ingrained.

Still, we can assume that with lawful work available for young men now in the drug trade, crime in many communities would drop; as a consequence more businesses and employers would come to those neighborhoods and a stable, self-sustaining community would take root. Over ten to fifteen years norms would begin to change, young men and women would start to imagine a future for themselves, marriage rates would increase, and children would have a more stable environment in which to grow up.

What would that be worth to us, as a society? Its hard to quantify the value of such changes because they are immeasurable in human, social, and economic terms.

Obama