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San Quentin Inmates Learn Technology From Silicon Valley Pros
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Washington Post reports that a rigorous, six-month training program launched by successful tech entrepreneurs for inmates in the decaying San Quentin State Prison is teaching carefully selected inmates the ins and outs of designing and launching technology firms, using local experts as volunteer instructors and the graduates, now trickling out of the penal system, are landing real jobs at real dot-coms. 'We believe that when incarcerated people are released into the world, they need the tools to function in today's high-tech, wired world,' says co-founder Beverly Parenti, who with her husband, Chris Redlitz, has launched thriving companies, including AdAuction, the first online media exchange. During twice-a-week evening lessons, students — many locked up before smartphones or Google— practice tweeting, brainstorm new companies and discuss business books assigned as homework. Banned from the Internet to prevent networking with other criminals, they take notes on keyboard-like word processors or with pencil on paper. The program is still 'bootstrapping,' as its organizers say, with just 12 graduates in its first two years and now a few dozen in classes in San Quentin and Twin Towers. But the five graduates released so far are working in the tech sector. 'This program will go a long way to not only providing these guys with jobs, but it is my hope that they hire people like them who have changed their lives and are now ready to contribute to society, pay taxes, follow the law, support their families,' says former California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation director Matthew Cate who adds he made the right decision to approve the training course. 'All those things contribute to the economy.'"
... that wants a job? GO PAY FOR EDUCATION!... oh you are not law abiding... let me pay for all the needed so you can get the job.
This applies for most European countries aswell
There are millions of poor people who had enough sense not to commit crime who would do ten times more with similar help languish, every politician lectures them to pull themselves up by the boot strap while continuing to cut investment in social programs, every pundit talks about how "poor people don't have ambition" or "poor are the takers and the rich are the makers".
Wish there are charities dedicated to helping the working poor. The government spends billions of dollars in helping middle class people get to and from work in their cars, public transport, traffic management, highway etc etc. But helping an inner city poor person to get to work in the suburbs? Hardly any help. They all live just one blown tire, one alternator going on the blink, one fender bender away from being sucked into the vicious vortex of inability to get to work, inability to earn their way into the work force ...
And all these felons, with newly minted tech skills thrown into the internet where nothing could be regulated or enforced... What can go wrong?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Sure, law abiding people deserve better. They deserve education, healthcare, housing and food. The fact that prisons provide these free of charge to prisoners is irrelevant.
They also deserve lower crime rates, and hopefully schemes of this kind will mean these offenders are less likely to re-offend. It's going to depend on the numbers. It's an unfortunate reality that justice isn't necessarily fair for people who do the right thing.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
You should know how much incercaration cost to society...I'm not in the US and I can tell you the US pays a crapload of money for their prison. A small investment like this seems to be fair if you ask me. They choose their people who have more chance to graduate and in return, they pay taxes when they get out of prison, seems like a win-win situation to me
Because, y'know, America has always been "land of the outraged, home of the vengeance" since before I was a child. If you didn't want to be treated as a sub-human piece of filth, maybe you shouldn't have broken the law! Or so the paranoid helicopter moms who refuse to prepare their children to become adults continue to parrot on iVillage.com all the time. PROTIP: people who have a decent job, a home in decent repair, food on their plate, and some semblance of a social life with other law-abiding people are way less likely to break in and steal your Xbox for fencing than the guy who can't get a job because felony automatically equals "human trash forever" and there's really no other way to survive out there.
The truth is that "criminals" are still people. You have to treat them as such. Give someone good reasons not to break the law...you know, like all that stuff I just said. They won't be so inclined to break it. Or, to put it another way, the most dangerous person is the one that has nothing left to lose.
Sure, law abiding people deserve better. They deserve education, healthcare, housing and food. The fact that prisons provide these free of charge to prisoners is irrelevant.
They also deserve lower crime rates, and hopefully schemes of this kind will mean these offenders are less likely to re-offend. It's going to depend on the numbers. It's an unfortunate reality that justice isn't necessarily fair for people who do the right thing.
It seems that criminals who have been convicted of rape, burglary, or fraud are just the type of geek that Silicon Valley has been avoiding. It used to be cool 20 years ago and you could get away with it as long as you proved your pathological profile complimented your crafting genius. Now it just pisses the yuppie geeks off.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Bring in nerds to try and turn cons into high tech entrepreneurs? Why not bring in Itzhak Perlman to teach them all how to be first-chair violinists? These guys need anger management, substance abuse counseling, and a job. They don't need angel financing.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
While I expected this barrage of "wait: you're gonna TEACH all those CRIMINALS things? What if they become SMARTER CRIMINALS?" or "what about the INNOCENT PEOPLE who don't get any help?" it's still an eerie feeling.
This is the intellectual elite? Sheesh.
If I had to single it out, I'd say this is the thing most wrong with USA society. It makes me sad.
'This program will go a long way to not only providing these guys with jobs, but it is my hope that they hire people like them who have changed their lives and are now ready to contribute to society, pay taxes, follow the law, support their families,'
Why didn't the milktoast suburbanites of san jose (silicon valley) and surrounding cities do this earlier, say before any of these candidate hires were charged or convicted with a crime? We're forgetting this and many other communities in california were the same ones who decided 3 strikes was a great idea to curb crime. that building prison repositories for nonviolent drug offenders was an easy way to pocket some private prison cash and rid the streets of low income minorities who were supporting their families and paying their taxes as best they could, until you criminalized their very existence. The program fails to take into account the lack of unskilled employment for people who certainly arent going to qualify for a position at google, but perhaps they used to be a good welder or carpenter. the program exists largely as an exercise in the psychology of guilt. the job education also doesnt take into account what being an inmate means in California or other states. It means you emerge with your housing and apartment applications categorically denied because you served time. It also means those nice companies that taught you cobol on your worst days, wouldnt so much as talk to you on the street on your best. you are a branded felon. no matter how much Java you learned you're faced with a system that endorses and accepts the wholesale shunning of an entire class of people from the employment system.
Good people go to bed earlier.
In the society, the curve with "standard of living" on y axis and effort by the individual on the x axis must be monotonic and increasing. You can mess with the slopes all you want. But if you make the curve non monotonic you will have hiccups.
Anyone not committing a crime must have a better standard of living than anyone who committed a crime.
Anyone working must have a higher standard of living, than anyone welfare.
Violate this principle, you would create incentives to commit crime, incentives to stay on welfare.
But, it is in the larger interest of the society to provide enough avenues and opportunities for people to help themselves. We need strong government incentives and investments for poorer people to see tangibly people working their way out of poverty.
Government must be seen like a private venture capital firm or a large mutual fund. It does not know who among the next generation is going to win who is going to struggle to make a living. But it will invest on everyone. Whoever wins, should return a portion of the winnings back to the government as dividend, you would call it tax. You might argue with the percentage and levels of dividend/taxation. But if you say, "all taxation is theft by the government" you would be a selfish ignorant unpatriotic unAmerican idiot. Government should invest the dividend back on the next generation of people.
The guideline should always be, "working poor doing better than welfare recipients, welfare recipients doing better than criminals".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yes, lots of HR departments in the Silicon Valley advertising for ex-cons with tech skills. This is a great way to spend tax payer money. Let's double down and spend a few billion (in a State with serious financial issues no less) educating ex-cons that can't get security clearance and who are untouchable by HR.
Also
So you want to spend millions or perhaps billions educating convicted felons to work jobs that HR will not hire them for because they are felons? You are a fucking idiot.
rofl?
Besides, the very same mentality you are displaying is why felons cant catch a break. Congrats to adding to the problem without offering any viable solution.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
Nothing mixed about it.
You can complain all you want that convicts shouldn't be getting stuff for free on your tax dime (never mind that you're already paying for their room and board anyway), but set aside your righteous indignation and think pragmatically.
If you put a black mark on convicts perpetually, you're basically guaranteeing that they'll spiral into a life of crime. What other option do they have? And what good does that do society? You give them an education and opportunity, at least there's a *chance* for positive outcome.
Yes, it costs more. Boo fucking hoo, it's called an investment and like any other investment, it carries some risk. It can't possibly be worse than the current system of "fuck you for life."
This is a GOOD thing, should be expanded into other occupational sectors and ought to become the national standard.
That's Ray Comfort logic: Have you ever stolen? Have you ever lied? You are a thieving liar.
-- Using the preview button since 2005