something to think about

I heard an interesting speaker last evening.  I attended a meeting of Faith in Indiana, a group that is trying to change some things in our Indiana prison system.  Their main concern is trying to promote treatment instead of incarceration for prisoners who are mentally ill or addicted.  In Allen county, according to their statistics, 40% of inmates have mental health diagnosis or addiciton.  There is a program on 20/20 this evening about this very issue.  But what interested me most was the story of the speaker I mentioned above. She spent 20 years in prison in Delaware County on a "domestic violence" conviction (no details about that).  During the first 15 years of her sentence she received  counseling, good medical care, and was able to get her GED and earn a bachelors degree.  She even made a point of saying that the food was good.  She has been out of prison for several years now and is  employed in a professional position.  After her first 15 years in prison, the prison was privatized, as were about  60 % of the prisons in Indiana.  The result was that almost all of the support that she had received in her first years was gone.  It basically became a place to eat, sleep and sit around.  At this point I'm not forming any opinions about what needs to be done, I'm just listening and learning.  I have a friend who taught in the prison system for many years and I would like to get her take on some of this.