Many people believe that the only way to make our communities safer is to build more prisons. But there's a way better protect cities and towns by doing just the opposite. In many countries throughout the world, prison populations have risen dramatically over the past decade. One of the main reasons for this is the large number of repeat offenders; that is people who break the law again once freed from jail. Statistics show that about one in four prisoners freed every year return to jail within three years. This is partly because ex-prisoners face huge difficulty finding employment. More than a third of them cannot find any job at all. Data show that having a job greatly reduces the chances that a person will commit a crime again or commit one in the first place. Released prisoners who do manage to find steady employment are 50 percent less likely to return to prison. Rather than harming a community, having a job helps ex-prisoners to change their ways and make a positive and productive contribution to their communities. What's more, helping these men and women find jobs would also save taxpayers a lot of money. Few prisoners would save governments millions or possibly even billions of dollars annually: the costs of building and operating jails. There are many things that the government can do to help ex-prisoners find work. More job training programs should be introduced to provide prisoners with work skills before they are freed. Companies and factories should also be given tax benefits if they employ ex-prisoners. Such programs have been shown to work in several countries. Such policies of course assure that freed criminals actually want to work. But shouldn't they be given the chance? Our goal, after all, shouldn't be to incarcerate as many prisoners as possible, but to build a society that doesn't need to put such a large percentage of its population in jail. We should take a step in that direction and help prisoners find self-respect and purpose through work. What percentage of freed prisoners returns to prison within three years?
65% 50% 33% 25%