Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Criminal Law

: The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Novel approach: reading courses as an alternative to prison

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

Novel approach: reading courses as an alternative to prison In Texas, offenders are being sent on reading courses instead of prison. Could it work in the UK? By Anna Barker The Guardian, Wednesday 21 July 2010 With one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and the death penalty, the US state of Texas seems the last place to embrace a liberal-minded alternative to prison. But when Mitchell Rouse was convicted of two drug offences in Houston, the former x-ray technician who faced a 60-year prison sentence ? reduced to 30 years if he pleaded guilty ? was instead put on probation and sentenced to read. "I was doing it because it was a condition of my probation and it would reduce my community hours," Rouse recalls. The 42-year-old had turned to drugs as a way of coping with the stress of his job at a hospital where he frequently worked an 80-hour week...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on July 28, 2010 (boomark / email).