re: Visited the Angola Rodeo and Craft fair and was amazed what I saw. Can good come from bad?

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my impression of it all was exactly the same...prisons always strike me as one hell of a waste of humanity. the talent that those guys in angola posses is really unbelieveable....and few of them will ever see freedom again.

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Not only that, but those who serve their sentence and pay their debt to society, who actually rehabilitate and learn a trade, when they get out their options for gainful employment are limited because of the felony charge on their record.

An anecdote.

Years ago I worked with a guy doing tech system installs. Dude was smart as a whip. Anything electronic he could have laid out, organized, troubleshooting issues he could foresee in the future and addressing the issue then instead of just saying frick it and going with the original plan and letting someone else deal with the problem later. Dude would design and build labor saving devices in his free time to make the job more efficient. And i’m Talking pretty technical stuff. Like building a line locator from spare parts. He had hustle and drive and ambiton and the skills and smarts to back it up.

Lots of driving time and chatting and it turns out he did time in the state pen. IIRC was with someone boosting some tools or something, petty shite. Got caught and there was a weapon (that might have been a tool or something), caught an armed robbery charge. Did a better part of a decade in prison. Learned skills and educated himself and eventually got out on parole. I guess that was why he was so good at installing security stuff, because he knew how to think like a thief.

Anyway i kept up with him even after I moved on to a better job. Guy was always making moves to try and better himself, buying equipment, starting a small business. Always tinkering.

And he’d Get interviews, blow them away, get hired and immediately start fixing stuff that didn’t work, damn good worker, reliable and efficient...

Until the background check would come back.
Had a felony, sorry, bye bye job.
Had a little business (liscensed and legit) subcontracting for another company, I think that skirted the felony stuff...flood comes and ruins everything.

Still been doing what he can but it seems that no matter what his present is, what skills he has now, time after time he either loses or doesn’t get a legit job because of a debt to society that according to the state has already been paid. Kind of a catch-22. Doesn’t surprise me that the recidivism rate is high when even those who have served their time are hamstrung from finding honest work.

There has to be a better way to rehabilitate people and make them productive members of society again

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my impression of it all was exactly the same...prisons always strike me as one hell of a waste of humanity. the talent that those guys in angola posses is really

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Talent doesn't mean a thing. Take them out of the structure of Angola and place them back in the free world where they have to make the structure and decisions for themselves and most will fall back to their old ways. Most of those people are not one time screw ups. Most have committed many crimes for which they were not caught. What the public knows about is only the tip of the iceberg.

Don't be easily swayed by trinkets and a friendly interaction.