It's troubled me for a long time. This part, the most:
"First, the high rate of incarceration and attendant flood of former offenders into neighborhoods have become major impediments. Men with criminal records tend to be shunned by employers, and young blacks with clean records suffer by association, studies have found."
B/c what it means is that there's no way out of the cycle.
In decades passed, young men could get into all sortso f trouble but they were able to rehabilitate themselves later in life - through education, through work, etc.
These days, you can't get aid for school if you have drug convictions, you can't live in public housing with some prior convictions, and you can't get a job (no more off to the military) with a prior conviction. What's left? More illegal activity.
It seems to me that without a concerted effort made to give employers incentives to hire ex-cons (the same way we did for mothers on state aid), nothing will change.