Christopher Petrella is a columnist for Nation of Change. On BusinessInsider.com (which is a much better site than its name would lead you to believe), he offers a trenchant and insightful article about ways this country can reduce its burgeoning prison population.

He didn’t miss a beat with this article. These are the things we’ve been saying on this site, since day 1. I’ll give you his run-down list here, but I strongly advise you click on the link below, and read the original article.

1. Replace mandatory sentencing laws with more flexible and individualized guidelines.
2. Strategically reduce “three-strikes” laws for non-violent offenders.
3. Relax Truth-in-Sentencing Laws.
4. Organize against prison gerrymandering to ensure that low-income communities receive a fair proportion of federal aid.
5. Make full employment a domestic policy goal.
6. Eliminate the use of for-profit, private prison companies.
7. Establish prison education programs and incentivize inmate participation.
8. Provide incentives for employers to hire ex-convicts.
9. Eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline.
10. Support community policing efforts.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-ways-to-reduce-us-prison-population-2012-10#ixzz28vpajEkZ

Related articles

• Ten Ways To Reduce The Prison Population In America (businessinsider.com)
• Nevada-CURE Documents Prisoner Abuses (deafinprison.wordpress.com)
• The Weekend’s Privatized-Prison News (slog.thestranger.com)
• 10 Ways to Reduce our Out-of-Control Prison Population (inprisonedwomen.wordpress.com)
• Nation’s First Privately Owned State Prison Riddled With Violations Of State Law (thinkprogress.org)
• Too Many Prisoners (nytimes.com)
• United States Private Prison Industry (inprisonedwomen.wordpress.com)
• Christopher Petrella – The Next Frontier in Prison Privatization? (prn.fm)
• Ex-inmates offer advice about lockup (stltoday.com)