Prison education and rehabilitation programs can provide practical skills, career and vocational skills, and critical thinking skills. They can help with mental and behavioral issues, and provide access to higher education courses; some achieve diplomas and degrees while incarcerated. These programs are vital to improving lives, especially since many prisoners come from poverty, do not have high school diplomas, and lack outside support networks.

Some Bureau of Prisons staff have recognized that, at least in some cases, approaching chronically self-destructive behavior as a treatment issue (not a disciplinary one) is the only way to rehabilitate someone with serious mental illness.

The "secret" to weight loss is, well, not a secret at all. All of us understand that weight loss is a mathematical equation.

Quality vocational training, in-prison work experience, and job opportunities upon release could be so transformative if only there were the vision and leadership to realize the potential.

A number of services provide federal inmates access to news and other information by email.

It's a sad fact that a prisoner charged with inmate misconduct is judged by the reporting officer's co-workers.

While playing on the soccer fields of the YMCA and at my school, we were always taught that honor was the expectation, not an idealistic concept.

If we as Americans want prisoners to succeed at something pro-social whether it be writing, learning, or not returning to a life of crime, we have to provide them with the tools to do so.

Providing college-level education to inmates has been shown to dramatically reduce recidivism and the cost to taxpayers of incarceration.

By internalizing and abiding by these principles, a new inmate will save a lot of strife and possibly violence, and even transform potential hard time to easy time.