My Prision Idea

I was reading the book Natural Capitalism recently, and one major theme in that book is how if a problem is solved in isolation, rather than looking at the whole system, it can create other problems. One example they gave was the prison system. As crime grows, the solution to that immediate problem is to incarcerate more people. But prisons can actually breed more hardened criminals which adds to the original problem.

I thought about this and here's my solution to the problem:

Have a homestay program where someone convicted of a non-violent crime gets put under house arrest in the home of a 'volunteer'. I put volunteer in quotes because the volunteer would get paid for this service. They would provide shelter and meals and the state would reimburse them for the saved costs of keeping someone out of jail. (The state would still provide health care.)

There are a couple rules that I envision to make this scheme work.

1. The guardians must be in a different zip code than the criminal is from. This is important, because as I understand it, one of the problems for prisoners is that when they return from prison, they go back to their same life, same problems, same bad influences. And while they are in jail, they are probably networking with people of similar backgrounds. So in this plan, during the house arrest they would be networking with people who they have nothing in common with.

I love this idea because it would bring people from different socio-economic strata together. If you live in Seattle, do you know a single person who lives on MLK Way? I don't, and I doubt any of my friends do. But with this plan, kids from 'the street' would meet people from suburbia, and vice versa. I think it does everyone some good to see how other people's lives are for a while.

2. The responsibility would be on the prisoner to behave themselves and follow whatever rules are set down. If they screw up, the guardians can call the police and have the prisoner taken back to jail. I think it should probably work the other way too - if the guardians are super mean, the prisoner should be able to request to be transferred to jail.

I know it might sound a tad crazy, but I think it would make our society a better place. If I ever have a place with an extra room again (probably won't happen anytime soon) I'll volunteer myself to be the guinea pig. And if somebody really wanted to make a lot of money off of this idea, they could turn it into a reality show.