Land of the jailed...

In a talk about farm finances and the Pennsylvania budget this morning, Pennsylvania State Senator Mike Brubaker told his audience that 85 percent of the budget goes to three programs that are mandated by the state constitution. The three are education, welfare and prisons. "We have five percent of the world's population," Brubaker told his audience, "and yet we have 25 percent of the world's incarcerated. And it costs $40,000 a year to keep a person in prison."
 

There are two possible conclusions you can draw from this statistic. One is: we are the world's most evil country. Two is: we have too many people in jail. I'm going to go with number two.  Violent criminals and people like Bernie Madoff should be in jail. People selling crack to kids should be locked up. But there are a thousand different laws that can send a person into the legal system. Shoplifting, for example, can result in jail time of supervised probation, depending upon whether or not the offender has competent legal help.
 

Education, counseling, electronic tracking cost money, but any of these approaches, or a combination, can help keep a person out of jail. And the cost to society isn't just the price of a bed and meals. A prison inmate can't work, can't contribute to the well-being of society, can't realize his or her full human potential.
 

It's a tragedy not just for the individual, or for the state budget, for for all of us.
 

A fifth-generation farmer from Lancaster County has carried on a family tradition with a grass-fed beef operation in a setting that Lancaster Farming correspondent Guy Steucek called "jewel-like." Liz Martin is the current keeper of the farm, which has a rich and varied history. You can read about her Ironstone Spring Farm in the Lancaster Farming edition due in your mailbox tomorrow.
 

That's not a cat, it's a teenager in disguise. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU2EtLHVoiI