The term “turn the Titanic around” is a curious one. After all, the original Titanic famously didn't get turned around in time.
The phrase implies, however, a sense not necessarily of impending fatality, but of hope. Thus the pop singer Amy Grant, imploring her lover to remember that “it takes a little time to turn the Titanic around.”
What’s true of an individual romance is also true of a major societal problem, Humans alone, among all the animals, have the capacity to imagine a different future. A future in which the Sword of Damocles does not fall, in which the Titanic does get turned around in time.
So it will be, I hope, with the problem of mass incarceration in America. The ridiculous, life-crushing extent of our prison predilection — and the need to reform it — is the constant theme of this blog.
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More than 40 percent of ex-cons commit crimes within three years of their release and wind up back behind bars, despite billions in taxpayer dollars spent on prison systems that are supposed to help rehabilitate them, according to a study released Wednesday. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42560154/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
ReplyDeleteNo doubt about it, recidivism is a huge problem.
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