A creative way to reduce taxpayer expense on new prisons may have been found. Judges are starting to sentence minor offendors to read a book, in order to avoid jail time. A bit unusual, but I have to say that I like the idea, as long as we don't offer this to persons who have been convicted of violent offenses. And a preliminary study shows that participants repeated their crimes only half as often as non-participants (granted, it was a small study).
It's worth a try, considering we have almost three million Americans in prison. What do you think? You can read the article at the NYT link below, then decide for yourself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/books/review/Price-t.html?ref=books
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