There are better uses of taxpayer dollars than to maintain high levels of incarceration simply to enrich the shareholders of for-profit prisons or to maintain prison jobs. During the 2012 budget talks in Colorado, a proposal was floated to re-appropriate over $5m from private prisons to support child literacy and other programs to help the needy and disabled. Such “radical” ideas are still in the theoretical stage, but at least there are glimmers of hope that mindsets are shifting. Reallocating resources towards other social services would create better jobs that would not rely on the loss of certain people’s liberty and would ultimately be far more beneficial to the public. As long as states keep viewing incarceration as a jobs program, however, there is little hope of meaningful change.