We have created a labyrinth of "treatment" and social services to "help the offender" succeed, but what about the victims? Who is helping them? For every symptom, we have created a special "therapy" for it. We spend more money on consultants, special projects, studies and programs; but all we have created is an industry and full employment for professionals and creative entrepreneurs. Yet, they cannot tell us how all our tax money has made our communities safer. Just don't tell us more money is needed to study that, too.

Why not try something radical, like examining how our sentencing guidelines could reduce crime and incarceration rates; or, how improved pre-sentence investigations can reduce prison population? And how can probation and parole agents help people access community resources when their training focuses primarily on law enforcement? What if prisoners were paroled without supervision, given a credit card they could use to obtain services from all those public agencies that are supposed to help people like education, employment, mental health, drug programs? And what if the staff person providing the service would earn bonus points in a paycheck? Parole staff could then be reassigned to prison duties since local police are the ones who arrest lawbreakers, anyway. So, why not try something new? Now guess who will oppose it?

What have we got to lose?

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Utah native John Florez has founded several Hispanic civil rights organizations, served on the staff of Sen. Orrin Hatch and on more than 45 state, local and volunteer boards. He also has been deputy assistant secretary of labor. E-mail: jdflorez@comcast.net