Obamacare has arrested the rocketing costs of health care. It will take some time for America to rise in quality of care among industrialized nations, but we have started improving.
President Barack Obama also is now addressing global warming. We can no longer afford the deaths, disruption and expense of super hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and fires. The billions now wasted on deja vu recoveries can instead be invested in our economic comeback.
So we are on a roll. How about waking up to prison reform?
We can return aging men and women to families and communities that need them and at the same time redirect needed money to Head Start and other programs that prevent crime. For every dollar spent on Head Start, we receive a $7 return in fewer prisons, drug rehabs, teen pregnancy centers, etc.
The world is worried about losing Nelson Mandela, but Nelson Mandelas are lost to us everyday. He is now so beloved that it is hard to believe he was on a U.S. terror watch list in 2008. Mandela served 18 years of a life sentence on Robben Island. Apartheid could have murdered him like it did Stephen Biko. Instead, African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo brought civilization along to the point where it demanded Mandela's release and we have him with us today.
How many Mandelas are wasted in prison who might instead be healing communities of racism, economic and social injustice? Can we afford to lose any of them?
RAPP (Release of Aging People in Prison) is a nonprofit organization working to repair our parole system. It is promoting policies proven elsewhere to reduce crime and recidivism while lessening the expense of prison systems. Here in New York, Mandela would have a slim chance of release at his initial parole board hearing. Realistically, looking at our current system, Nelson Mandela might never have been released.
Jesus was right. Violence begets violence. Injustice is nothing more than an alternative spelling. A person who has served his sentence, who has kept out of trouble — not easy in prison — and worked for personal growth, justly deserves to be released.
Using health care research, we realized we were spending twice as much as any other nation without a quality of care to show for it. In response to the science of global warming, we are curbing fossil fuel pollution.
Why not stick with science in formulating our prison policies? We imprison more than any other nation on Earth. Our outcome is the highest reported crime rate in the world. Between 1980 and 2010 our incarcerated increased by 400 percent.
Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If we don't want to spend more on crime than other nations while reaping worse results, let's respond to the research and free New York's Nelson Mandelas.
The recidivism rate for people over 50 is about 3 percent. That 3 percent might be people who've been in so long they now find the outside adjustment impossible.
Four centuries ago, Quaker founder George Fox warned against long prison sentences. If we truly care about crime and the community, fewer people in prison leaves more families whole. That nurtures healthier communities and leaves more funding for those communities.
Tom Bulger lives in Canandaigua and is a member of the Quaker group Alternatives to Violence.