Give Every Prisoner a Volunteer Mentor

   How about every prisoner having a mentor, a member of the community to befriend them, a role model to come in and counsel them?
   There are great benefits to such a suggestion. One, the prisoner can use the example, the friendship and the direction. Two, such a program invests the community in the process of rehabilitating the prisoner. When the prisoner exits his cell, he will benefit by having an example and friend on the outside, to help keep him on course.
   But, we would need to be careful in selecting the mentors. They would need to be exemplary people, not criminal buddies coming in to take advantage of this system. While it would be wonderful to match prisoners with someone from their own neighborhood, that will often not be possible. It will have to suffice to choose them a mentor who lives close enough to the prison to visit often, and close to the prisoner's home only when that is practical.
   There is a cost to having a great society, a price to be paid, and sometimes it is not monetary. If we would have a great society, where prisoners are rehabilitated more often, we should invest ourselves. If we would do this, we would stand a better chance of rehabilitating our prisoners.