Edition: U.S. / Global  Spare the Rod When Treating Troubled
Youth; Prisons Don't Work  Published: November 4, 1994  To the
Editor:  Washington and the state governments are falling all
over each other to approve billions of additional dollars for
more prisons and police, even though 74 percent of all prison
space in the United States was built in the last 10 years. The
march toward more prisons and longer sentences is truly bizarre
in the face of its clear lack of effectiveness.  How many more
years and billions of dollars will it take before we learn what
does not work? We take poor, ill-educated young men from noisy,
crowded, violent communities where status depends on being tough
and cold, put them into noisy, crowded, tough prisons where
survival depends on being tough and cold, release them with $100
or so for a bus ticket back to the environment that produced
them and are then shocked and angry because they haven't become
good citizens!  What would help in prisons would be educational
opportunity for c