Did you read the AP news article about the Tour de France Pénitentiaire? French prison officials selected 200 prisoners to participate in a two week, 1,370 mile event that has 15 stages averaging 90 miles each. Prison guards cycle with them and each start and finish is close to a penitentiary where prisoners stay between stages. They have a financial sponsor, Francaise des Jeux, a lottery group that sponsors a team in the real Tour de France. Professional coaches and cyclists have visited the prisons to offer advice in advance of the prisoners' Tour.
While I'm sure that French prisons are no walk in the park, can you imagine this happening in the US? We invest money in building prisons, not in rehabilitation. California's politicians are held hostage by the prison guards' union. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County in Arizona is famous for housing inmates in tent cities in the desert (with extreme daytime temps inside the tents, especially in the top bunks), instituting chain gangs for females and juveniles and for introducing pink underwear for prisoners.
France has a director of athletic programs for their prisons; the US has one in one hundred Americans imprisoned. Now that the California budget is imploding and will be forced into prison early release programs, don't you think we'd be better off if the prisoners had been prepared with reentry programs to help them reintegrate successfully?
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