In the spirit of Jim Devine's posting on California being knee-deep in the
big doo-doo and looking to a prison lead construction boom I offer the
following, based on the principle that if you cannot stop them you can always
subvert them.
Don't look at prisons and prisoners as occuring at the opportunity cost of
schools and students, look at the process as an alternative form a enrolment
in a public institution. As a friend in D.C. says, when a student goes to jail,
the "system" has not lost the person, it is just a transfer to a better/worse
institutional setting. He see parole supervision as a possible form of distance
education! So, look to the potention here. Lots of people with lots of time on
their hands, mostly stuck in little cells (quite like the study carrels in the
library). Jim proposes that maybe we could "export" them to China to use China'
s comparative advantage (static or dynamic Jim?) in cost efficient prison care.
Nooo Jim, then they would compete with our own license plate operation. They
are idea candidates for the information highway. Pen-L should join with those
who would see a Pen-Net movement (Motto: Modems for Cons2Prose). With very
limited geographic mobility and lots of time on their hands, we could put them
all on the network. They could do cross boarder provision of dataservices, they
could teach courses based on the skills that landed them in jain, the could
form networks of prison-yard lawyers, they could write CAD-CAM applications for
this and that. No incarceration without communication. The possibilities are
endless and should we wake up and think that jailing everyone is folly, it will
be easy to retool the places as schools - if anyone could tell the difference.
Sam Lanfranco (York U on a bad day) [EMAIL PROTECTED] CANADA
