I got a text from an old friend yesterday that put the last 20 years of my life in a whole different light.

I had an insanely demanding day yesterday and wasn’t able to read Richard’s text until this morning after gobbling a bowl of cereal over my morning Scripture. It was 4 a.m. when I finally read it. In his text, he related how he had reluctantly picked up a hitchhiker on a cold Anchorage morning. The hitchhiker was visibly subdued as he got into Richard’s van, and he had a sad story to tell. What he disclosed was enough to make anyone take a step back:

So I swung the van back around to pick up this hitchhiker, who didn’t look as though he was having much luck. He told me he had just gotten back to Alaska from Washington State and that he had been gone away in prison for 19 years. We talked and swapped stories about Anchorage and eventually got around to talking about high schools. I told him I graduated from West High in 1986. He said that he should have graduated in 1985 but McLaughlin Youth Center ruined it.

“My ears were pricked up; he definitely had my attention now. This wayfaring vagabond told me his sad tale, and right before he got out of my van, he stuck his hand out and thanked me. Introductions at last… Tyrone H—-.

My jaw hit the floor when I read the name at the end of Richard’s text. Richard and I had done a stint in McLaughlin Youth Center (Alaska’s largest juvenile corrections facility) with him many years ago. I had long ago forgotten his name. Now he was a grown man in his forties, just emerging from a 19-year prison sentence.

I thought about three troubled teenage boys nearly thirty years ago, full of anger and bewilderment, emotions and hormones easily overtaking our shaky grasp of life principles. We scarcely understood the meaning of our juvenile crimes, let alone the underlying reasons we had committed them. This was an opportunity for the three of us to mend our ways before the world started handing us serious consequences. Richard and I managed to find our way out of the maladjusted snarl we had stumbled into. Tyrone didn’t.

Richard and I met in January of 1983, when we were both 15 years old. We had both been inducted into Alaska’s Juvenile Corrections system for small-time scurrilous conduct. I admired Richard for his intellect, humor and his independent mind. We both carried a robust bravado that belied the fragmented road we were on. For if we had each persisted on this road, our lives would have turned out dark and lonely, buried in regret.

It took some years for each of us to straighten out and find civilized ways of getting our needs and desires in life met. It didn’t happen when we were 15, or 25 for that matter. In 1983, we were in a light-fare juvenile program for mildly wayward young men called Adventure House. It was minimum security; any kid could walk right out the front door and down the street if he wanted to. Some did. Richard and I didn’t, but the inner struggles we faced were too great to be turned around by the gentle structure of Adventure House. We were like those deep water fish that blow up if they are brought too near the surface. We each continued running afoul of society’s boundaries with such reckless disregard for authority that we both ended up in the place where the worst juvenile offenders go: Closed Treatment Unit (CTU), a subset of McLaughlin Youth Center. We were each sent there, not because our crimes were serious but because we were profoundly troubled. It was a mercy that we came there, though at the time it seemed that society had thrown us away.

CTU was a military school that looked like the inside of a prison. When you walked into the unit, you saw nothing but a bank of cells. The days were filled with exhausting physical exercise, year-round schooling and demanding program activities. The staff were ruthless in confronting manipulation and anti-social behavior. The pride of many rebels was crushed in that place, where nothing was left to distract the teenager from his self-made mess. The counselors were educated and well trained. The individuals who submitted to the rigorous therapy were given the opportunity for the light of knowledge and sanity to come in and break up the darkness inside them, which none of us understood.

Richard and I held on to some of our peccadilloes; we weren’t perfect disciples by any means. We called the place Closed Torture Unit and shared clandestine laughter at the expense of the staff in hushed conversations. We broke some rules and kept our sanity by considering ourselves a little bit too healthy for such a serious environment. But on another level, we both knew that we were there for a reason. We saw what had been happening to us in our young lives and chose light instead of darkness, though it meant painful probing in the counseling sessions, the shock of self-disclosure, the Herculean effort required to change. We were set on a different road, almost by sheer external force, so intense was this program. But to the degree that we chose right over wrong, we began placing our feet on the path to health and freedom, little knowing that the grueling experience at CTU was only the beginning of a lifelong process of correction through ongoing self-evaluation and submission to a higher way. I learned not long after finishing this program that what I was exposed to at CTU was the first murky rays of God’s light of truth shining into my life.

Richard and I have both fought battles with drug addiction, alcoholism and various flavors of self-destructive compulsivity. We both acknowledge God in our lives and see the inherent danger in the self-will that almost destroyed us as youths. Even so, the relative freedom we have gained through the wisdom God imparted to us has not prevented us from pining for more — more stability, more health, more fulfillment in life.

Sometimes we find appreciation through contrast, when our proportionate blessings are seen against foils — the lives of less fortunate people. If only others didn’t have to suffer in order for us to have an understanding of our comparative station. But everyone has to choose his own road in life. Tyrone is such a foil. When I put my story together with his, I exult in the fact that I avoided the road he ended up on. At the same time, I shudder to think about what he suffered.

Nineteen years! I thought about all the things I had enjoyed over the last 19 years: delicious dinners with family members, invigorating university class lectures, great movies, dates with lovely ladies, heartfelt talks with trusted friends, bicycle rides in the sunshine — the list is almost endless. I have complained bitterly at times because I thought I was living a “B” life. But I am rich!

Tyrone, on the other hand, had to live in a box of steel and concrete for 228 months — 6,935 days of eating dismal food, watching Jerry Springer and Maury Povitch on television and jockeying for space with violent, angry, hopeless people, many of whom will never breathe free air again. I hope he had friends and family members who still loved and cared for him, that he received letters and packages to brighten his days. Even if he did, I can’t quite wrap my mind around 19 consecutive birthdays in prison. What did he feel when he saw beautiful women on television, or coming to visit other inmates? What was it like to see people come and go year after year, listening to stories of life on the outside, while he languished in confinement for such a long time? What a strange blend of joy and revulsion he must have experienced when he looked at photographs of family members enjoying Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas gatherings, picnics and frolics at the beach!

Surely every prison inmate is a walking lesson on human waywardness. There is nothing inside “them” that can’t be found in every one of us — a great breach between the good we desire and the failure that is our collective lot. The Bible calls it our fallen nature. William Golding refers to it as a “defect” in his disturbing book The Lord of the Flies, in which a group of adolescent boys is stranded on a deserted island and, left to their own inclinations, form factions and become would-be murderers. They are, in fact, engaged in a senseless manhunt when they are interrupted by an adult rescue team that has discovered their whereabouts. Whatever we call it, every person is driven (at least in part) by irrational impulses. This is true even of those who fight tooth and nail to bring about a better outcome.

I realized through this event that I could easily have wound up in the shoes of our old comrade from McLaughlin Youth Center. I have made many abysmal choices in my life. I went through violent and bewildering experiences that put me into a posture of defense against the entire world when I was still only a child. I lived like a hermit for many years in spite of being surrounded by people. I had the classic paradigm of the victim, shared by 2.3 million prison inmates across the nation. Of course, I may well have had advantages Tyrone did not — upbringing, environment, genes, mental/emotional health. I had no say in any of these. The upshot of all this is that, in the final analysis, God’s grace is the decisive factor that separates the prison inmate from the successful surgeon.

Why am I out here while so many are caged like animals? Why didn’t I descend into a feral state as so many have? All the precursors were there. The odds were that I would end up living an institutional life. Society has little choice but to confine those who cannot overcome their base drives and toxic emotions. How did I make it out? I have only one answer: God intervened in my life; Christ the Savior chose me before the creation of the world to become one of God’s own. I will thank Him for all eternity. 

A study of the “ghetto” labor market in Boston in 1968…showed that about 70 percent of the job applicants referred by neighborhood employment centers received offers. More than half of the offers were rejected, however, and only about 40 percent of those who took jobs kept them for as long as a month. “Much of the ghetto unemployment,” the author explains, “appears to be a result of work instability rather than job scarcity.”

…As Michael J. Piore, an M.I.T. economist, points out, they leave their jobs without notice, sometimes steal, are frequently absent or late, are insubordinate, and so on…

In 1966, the U.S. Department of Labor made an intensive survey in slum areas of eight large cities… Of the persons who were found, between 10 and 20 percent of those who should have been working were neither working nor looking for work. Only one in five of these said that he would be willing to “live away from home temporarily to take training or get a “job” or to “move to another metropolitan area if it meant getting a job.”… Unemployment in these areas is primarily a story of inferior education, no skills, police and garnishment records, discrimination (more frequently on the basis of age than of race), fatherless children, dope addiction, hopelessness.” “The problem,” the Labor Department suggests, “is less one of inadequate opportunity than of inability, under existing conditions, to use opportunity.” – Edward C. Banfield, The Problem of Unemployment, The Unheavenly City.

The study which I’ve just concluded has similar findings. Listening to the young people I had discussions with, they demonstrated a general lack of direction, in life and career, regardless of whether they are from families below or above the poverty threshold. Digging deeper into this phenomenon, we came upon deep-rooted family issues such as mentioned above: lack of parental attention, care, and guidance, dysfunctional relationships in the families, emotional traumas, taking on the role of household head at young ages (e.g. 15), and the like. Of course, for the economically poor, these issues are on top of their economic situation. Slum dwellers, they are without land and constantly threatened even in their sleep of being booted out of what they call house and home. Their lives so far, though they have unbelievably and bravely endured and coped up with, at their young age, are crisis upon crisis. They live on the edge, socially, economically, literally. And not their fault, to start with. This is the poverty trap in the context of Sen’s ‘deprivation of capabilities’.

The easy solution is to raise the minimum wage but unemployment in this country is a deep wound. It will not go away by adding layers of Band Aid.

Why is there unemployment even when total supply of jobs is large? Part I mentioned the effect of minimum wage. Apart from this, there are

…seniority provisions…discriminate against the low-productivity worker. Knowing that he will be permitted to promote only from within, an employer does his best to hire only those whom he can afford to promote eventually. Therefore, the worker who is perfectly capable of pushing a brush around the factory floor but not of doing much else will not get a job. The employer cannot risk having to put him in charge of an expensive machine or in a supervisory position someday.

Occupational licensure is another way… By restricting entry into certain occupations to those who have passed a course of training – by requiring, for example, that in order to cut hair one must graduate from a barbering school that provides at least one thousand hours of instruction in “theoretical subjects” and then go through an apprenticeship… the cities…reduce employment opportunities for the workers whose possibilities are most limited.

Illicit enterprises…tend to have the effect of setting an informal minimum wage for unskilled labor that has no relation to the market value of such labor and that other employers cannot afford to pay… Asked why he did not go downtown and get a job, a Harlem youth replied:

Oh, come on. Get off that crap. I make $40 or $50 a day selling marijuana. You want me to go down into the
garment district and push one of those trucks through the street and at the end of the week take home $40 or $50
if I’m lucky? Come off it….

…some chronic unemployment among unskilled workers who are concentrated in the inner city. For one thing, factories have long been moving from the inner to the outer city and from the city to the suburbs and beyond. …economic, class-cultural, and racial factors tend to prevent some factory workers from following their jobs out of the city. Of particular importance are the relative abundance of cheap housing in the central city as compared to the suburbs and the inability or unwillingness of some workers to commute to jobs in the suburban fringe.

…shift from factory employment (to services) has probably been injurious to the unskilled and to members of minority groups: the criteria for selecting service workers are more likely to be “subjective” and thus unfair to – or at any rate unfavorable to – those whose attributes are considered undesirable. No one cares if a factory worker speaks crudely, scratches himself in the wrong places, or is physically unattractive; if he can read signs like DANGER – NO SMOKING and if he keeps his part of the assembly line moving, little else matters. In many service jobs, one the other hand, it is essential that the service worker “make a good impression” on the middle class people he serves. If ethnic, racial, class, or other characteristics render him unattractive in their eyes, he is for that reason unemployable. The problem is not that he is unskilled, but that he is aesthetically objectionable – he spoils the decor, so to speak… – Edward C. Banfield, The Problem of Unemployment, The Unheavenly City.

And others more that my fingers are suddenly unable to type. The issue of unemployment in the context of this country, that is, having a high poverty level (the poor, therefore, lacking in marketable skills), has also to do with institutions or rules of the game in the labor market.

A principal effect of the minimum wage is to “injure some of the lowest-paid workers by forcing them into even lower-paid occupations exempt from the act, one of which is unemployment”… the effect of the minimum wage is not to cause an employer to raise wages… rather, it is to cause him to eliminate all labor that now costs more than it is worth in his productive process… work is done in ways that economize on low-productivity but high-cost labor; labor-saving methods are tried, machines are substituted for labor, and a somewhat higher quality of labor is hired at the somewhat higher wage set by law, leaving the least productive with fewer and worse opportunities than before. – Edward C. Banfield, The Problem of Unemployment, The Unheavenly City.

I’ve recently concluded a study on youth employment and from this a perfect case illustrates the point made by Banfield. In one of the study sites, college/university undergraduates and graduates compete with high school graduates for jobs such as clerks and other low-quality labor. (The college undergraduates and graduates cited lack of confidence as their main reason in not seeking jobs within their skills level.) Employers hire the college undergraduates and graduates 99.9% of the time.

If I’m the employer, I’d do the same. Why? Market pressures. I’d prefer college graduates even for jobs that can be done by high school graduates because I want to maximize the value of what I pay for labor. Compared to the high school graduate, the college graduate is worth the PHP 446 (current minimum wage in Manila). By hiring the college graduate, for the same amount of wage, I have in my production force a more reliable, more productive labor.

Going back to the study site. The situation, in effect, was and continues to be detrimental to the employment prospects of the locale’s high school graduates. So-called jobless growth had nothing to do with it. The minimum wage does.

I think it was the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce in its Arangkada report who mentioned that the minimum wage in the context of the Philippines does not reflect labor productivity but rather lifestyle. In essence, employers pay minimum wage workers (in Manila) the PHP 446 regardless of whether the worker is productive or not. The rational highly-productive worker on the other hand is pushed to think whether or not it is worth the effort to be more productive than the least productive worker who is paid the same wage as he or she is.

Copyright: AFP/Amar Desh

“Pro-Hartal activists were shaking the pillars, which may be why Rana Plaza has collapsed!”, a minister said.

I, too, have gained an engineering certification from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). There is a fair chance that this will be read by my teacher Professor Jamilur Reza Chowdhury or renowned architect Professor Shamimuzaman Basunia.

I was not a great student in BUET. But, however weak a student I may have been, I can guarantee that a nine storey building will not fall if ten people shake one of its columns with all their force. But one does not have to be a Professor of Political Science to say that the minister’s comments could cause a government’s fall.

The collapse of Rana Plaza repeatedly reminds me of the last line from W.B Yeat’s poem – Things Fall Apart – everything falls down. One of Chinua Achebe’s books has the same title. Humyoon Azad wrote a book named ‘Demolish Everything’.     

Who grabbed whose land? Who filled the pond with what? Isn’t it illegal to fill in wetlands? Who gave them permission to build the building? Which architect did the design? Which structural engineer did the structural design? Who approved it? What was the motive behind construction of that building? Why were factories allowed in an office-building? Specially with a high density labor force and machines which emit excessive heat? What did the Labor Ministry do? What did RAJUK do?  

I have often said in my columns that in Dhaka and its surroundings, where land is more expensive than gold, where the cost of living is expensive, why would multi-storied buildings be built? Raw materials for garment factories come from overseas, and the finished goods are exported overseas; shouldn’t these factories be developed around seaports? So much money is being earned, please relocate garment factories from Dhaka city, from commercial and residential buildings. Who will listen? The gold laying goose won’t die by itself. Greed and sin will slaughter it.

And poor workers. Oh, my worker brothers and sisters. Sacrificing childhood-teen-youth they work hard wholeheartedly, under intense heat of light – how much do they get? Where do they live? What do they eat? Who looks after their health? We never asked – the wheel is moving, the bobbin is moving, the stitching-needle is going up and down, earning foreign currency.

We see Mercedes and BMWs in the streets of Dhaka, and we see other exclusive cars for which we do not know the names. Some of us also get a share of this opulence when it overflows. We also get to ride in cars. Inequality is extreme. But negligence, injustice and unethical attitudes are much more extreme. We are living over a pile of gunpowder. 

Our well tended garden will end, if the garment-workers get together and come out to take their revenge for this deprivation. Just as we have sent the poor orphans to Qaumi Madrasas, where we never wanted to know how they were. We did not keep informed of what they study, what they think. Now, when they came out in numbers it gets us thinking or may be not.

And party politics is responsible for everything; democracy has been turned into plunder-cracy; the end of the rule-of-law, limitless greed, lack of compassion, dispossession of lands, bribes, corruption, dereliction of duty – in other words chaos.

Yet, I have hope. The Fire Service workers, construction workers and ordinary people risks their lives to enter the ruins to rescue people. Many rushed with blood and oxygen cylinders. Many are looking for ways to donate financial support.

As this compassionate attitude still exists among the general public, the sun still rises, dawn breaks, birds sing.

Anisul Hoque is a Bangladeshi screenwriter, novelist, dramatist, and journalist. Unnashic is a blogger for AlalODulal.org

Read the unabbreviated Bengali original op-ed here

The office is far from being the only place where distrust happens to be significant. The entire agora leaks out fear. So much that people segregate themselves. The wealthier and the poor don’t mingle. The suburbs, which expand rapidly, so fast that Defence House Authority radically grown from 4 to 11 phases, became a refuge for those classify as the upper middle class. The money is there, along with the real estate businesses, the restaurants, the western shops, etc. In the shrinking city centre remain the poor, the underclass as I’ve heard this term which I personally don’t understand, and the lower middle class. The rich are creating a bubble they don’t want to live out. “Once in a blue moon, people would go on food street to get sensation. It’s like, let’s be crazy and go in Old Lahore”, tells a 32 years old working mother living in DHA. “I would love to walk around the city, sit in a public garden and have a nice picnic with my husband and son. But the constant staring on me as a woman is simply unbearable”, she explains. Maybe because the poorest you are, the less educated you are. Consequently, the destitute inhabitants’ references are as old as the city is, with reminiscences of patriarchal habits, leading them to look at women as property. And so what? People think differently, the needy beg, the rich walk in their Gucci. Give what you want to receive and stop honking on each other every single second.

The first day I arrived in Lahore three weeks ago, I decided to observe how things work at the micro level to understand the macro one. Indeed, I believe you can see the ocean in a drop. The way each person behave singly has an impact on his environment. I am aware that in the subcontinent culture, contrary to the western countries’, the notion of collectivity is dominant, as oppose to the concept of individuality. Still, if the tradition is about adding value to the group, each body and spirit inside it should act to reinforce the structure, not to weaken it. Collectivity must not get its members off the hook regarding their own responsibilities. I am not saying here that one person has the power to change the world, it would be utopian and I get the feeling that Pakistanis can’t afford to believe in big ideals. What I believe is that one behaviour influences many more around.

Society tends to anarchy

For instance, a few days ago, I went to Anarkili bazaar for the first time, a place where I had been told that I would feel uncomfortable. As I walked around, people looked at me, I kindly looked back at them, started to chat with them about the electricity and the load-shedding and how it affects their mental state, they answered me and happened to be very open-minded. The day after, the friend I went to the market with told me : “I am very surprised that everyone is so nice to you and so willing to talk to you, which is usually not the case with foreigners or anyone for that matter.” Suspicion is not a gene specific to Pakistani people, it has been transplanted in their mind. First grounds is the constant institutional contention with a trichotomy of power dominated by the hyperactive judiciary branch. The violence in politics through this country’s history weakened the government authority and produced a mindset in society. Citizens give no significance to laws and rules, therefore society tends to anarchy. Just look at the traffic! It is a tell-tale barometer. Concepts of consideration and respect don’t run in the streets. Instead, it’s every driver for himself with this need of overtaken one another.

The second grounds of suspicion among people is their weakening condition. The traditional links of solidarity present in clans, tribes and joint families are breaking up, leaving isolated individuals. One might believe this is just the same process the Western countries went through 200 years ago, which eventually led to individuals’ empowerment. Well, this is not the same situation because the emergence of individuals is not accompanied by a revolution. In America and in Europe, revolutions led to overall reforms that gave rights and guarantees to each and every one. Here, no new set of principles has replaced the lost traditional one. For four decades, political directions have made the left principles collapsed. The notions of community and universal well-being simply vanished and were crushed by free market and greed. This damaging process creates individuals with no power, lured and obsessed with the idea that others are inevitably a menace.

But these days are particularly suitable for people to stop suspecting their fellow citizens because everyone is given the same right to vote. Before and during the elections, you all have the same power. Your voice is worth you neighbours’, your colleagues’, your maid’s, your cook’s, your boss’. Careful! Your only enemy is your fear.

The image of the Victorian convict prison has been enshrined in popular fiction and historical accounts alike. It is no doubt some of these representation that inform many of the ministerial decisions taking place today; A harsh unrelenting system of reform, punishment and self-reflection; An institution that brutalised the body to civilise the mind.

A short historical perspective has perhaps blinded many of us to the fact that when these institutions were created the early part of the Victorian period, the modern penal system (still in place today) was trying to make the experience of criminal justice, and undergoing punishment not more unpleasant for those at its mercy, but less so.

The ‘Bloody Code’ of the eighteenth century is a period in English criminal justice history that is in many ways more notorious than either its nineteenth or twentieth century equivalents. The iconic images of Tyburn’s gallows, of any local pillory, or the chaos of the infamous Newgate gaol help us to vividly imagine a brutal legal system so unlike our own.

The justice dispensed prior to the nineteenth century cared and catered little for the age, gender, or vulnerability of offenders, only for the perceived guilt or innocence of the accused. The corporal and (in some severe instances) capital punishment of children – for what in many cases could be subsistence level crimes  – is the most famed and unsettling legacy of this system. But perhaps more sinister even than that was the social and cultural experience of being incarcerated in a pre Victorian prison such a Negate or the transportation hulks. Gaols such as this acted not as institutions that dispensed punishment and strove to reform offenders, but instead of holding pens – a place to detain criminals until they could be brought before the court, or after their conviction until their sentence – to be whipped, transported or hung for example – could be carried out. These ‘lock-ups’ mixed men women and children together in a series of shared cells. The conditions of these places not only lacked basic hygiene standards, but ultimately left inmates vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and sexual violence. These were institution renowned for corruption, money rather than need determined an inmate’s experience.

Developing Victorian social sensibilities – particularly those concerning gender – saw traditional processes of the legal system come under scrutiny, and the institutions prevalent during ‘the Bloody Code’ give way to those modern penal institutions that still service the justice system today. These institutions aimed not just to punish, but to civilise, humanise, and reform the prisoners within. Whilst Victorian society had labelled women the gentler, weaker sex, and fully acknowledged their inability to withstand the same interactions with the world that men undertook, the prison systems of Victorian England catered little for the difference between male and female prisoners.

Alongside some specialised regimes such as the separate and silent system – where prisoners were discouraged from communicating with one another, so as to encourage self-reflection, and deter the formation of criminal friendships – most prison operated a points and class based system dependent on notions of rights, responsibilities, and privileges, much like the ‘new system’ Chris Grayling is suggesting currently. This system held the key to a prison inmate’s experience – what diet they were permitted, how regularly they were allowed to write letters or receive visits, if and when they were permitted to socialise, what work they carried out, and what money they might receive on leaving prison.

Sarah Jane Swann’s penal record indicating she was in the ‘Star Class’

Sarah Jane Swann’s points record for 1881

Other commonalities of the prison regime were the use of uniform to strip prisoners of their former identity, and long days of laborious work, to punish the body and occupy the mind – for women, examples include fourteen to sixteen hour days in the prison laundry.

Throughout the Victorian period, and well into the twentieth century, debates about Prison regimes, prison reform and the welfare of prisoners raged. With every gain made for better treatment of prisoners, staunch opposition was raised complaining of lessened deterrent for wrongdoers.

Yet the changes that did take place over the period were the real victories of the Victorian prison system.  Developments for female convicts included the education of prisoners, the provision of proper medical care, nurseries that allowed mothers to maintain contact with their children should they give birth in prison, and most importantly, refuges that acted as a stepping stone between incarceration and freedom  - striving to place women in employment once they were released.

It was the facilitation of a life outside of prison, that saw women (and men) most commonly cease to offend. It was by humanising them, not brutalising them, by offering hope, not despair, that prisoners could be turned back into people.

The Victorian prison system was far from perfect. Despite continuous reforms, it cannot have been a pleasant place to be – perhaps that is its appeal as a model for modern government policy.

Instead of looking back to the Victorian ‘golden age’ of penal reform and coveting some of the the worst aspects of this; the uniforms, the hard labour, the points systems, and the restrictive daily routines, perhaps it might be of more use to ministers to consider the wisdom of previous penal reformers and prison philanthropists instead. These individuals and organisations came to understand that it is by improving the quality of life and living for those most desperate and disenfranchised in society – those most likely to offend – that we reduce the rate of crime and most importantly, recidivism. No matter how unpleasant you make the experience of prison, until you improve opportunity and quality of life on the outside, there will always be inmates aplenty to fill the cells.

Overall
1. Particularly for labor market activities and business performance, youth is highly associated with program success.
2. Women are not associated with any large and significant impacts other than the outcome of attitudes, indicating that entrepreneurship programs seem useful for female empowerment but may not be sufficient to address various barriers faced by women.
3. Existing entrepreneurs also seem to benefit from the programs in improving their business knowledge and practice, but this is negatively associated with business performance.
4. When it comes to intervention type, a package providing both training and financing seems to perform better in promoting labor market activities. However, training alone can be quite useful to improve business knowledge and practice, and financing alone does well in enhancing business performance by releasing credit constraints. This suggests that more customized interventions can enhance cost effectiveness depending on the outcomes of interest and the constraints.

Outcome level
Labor Market Outcomes
1. A package approach is found to be more effective to improve labor market activities on average, but the extent varies by the type of beneficiary. This finding is strongest for youth and social assistance beneficiaries but does not hold among women. For women, the impacts from microcredit interventions, such as the expansion of access to loans for rural households seem higher than training programs. Women are generally more severely credit constrained, and this in turn can hamper their potential gains from skills training. Financing support performs better for women throughout all outcomes. For business owners, gaining access to finance does little to increase their activities than receiving business training.

2. Training seems to have greater impacts, especially for the higher education group in increasing their income, although this was less evident in the case for labor market activities. A package approach to provide both training and financing seems to be a promising graduation strategy for social assistance beneficiaries as it increases both labor market activities and income.

3. Expansion of access to credit in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Philippines presents modest performance, while experiences in India and Mongolia do not appear to be as strong. Programs targeting social assistance beneficiaries from Argentina’s Jefes and Chile’s Solidario contribute more to unsuccessful outcomes than successful ones, suggesting that helping the poor exit from social assistance programs by promoting self-employment is a challenging task.

Business and Behavioral Outcomes
1. Business training alone can be quite effective in improving business knowledge and practice. This is particularly true for those who already have their own businesses. For women, however, training does little but financing matters in changing their business practice, suggesting that women may not be the decision maker in business practice unless they have capital under their control.

2. With respect to business performance, financing seems to be the most relevant and effective intervention. Thus access to credit probably plays a greater role in improving business performance than training. That being said, training alone is strongly associated with business performance of youth and higher education individuals, especially in the studies where business training was provided for these entrepreneurs (Bruhn and Zia, 2011 for business training targeted to young entrepreneurs in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Drexler et al., 2011 for business training for microenterprise owners in Dominican Republic), suggesting that a more efficient use of resources can achieve outcomes as effectively when targeted to these groups of entrepreneurs.

3. Many training programs result in improved business knowledge and practice but are unsuccessful when it comes to business performance.

Conclusions
1. With respect to training programs, it seems that vocational and business training work better than financial training, and can be further improved by combining financing support or counseling. Business training for entrepreneurs, in particular, appears to be a relatively cost-effective way of promoting business performance and growth with a short intervention period, although improved knowledge and practice through training does not always materialize as increased income.

2. In terms of financing, there are little variations in effectiveness of cash, in-kind grants, and microcredit.

3. Programs need to be customized for each outcome of interest addressing the specific constraints relevant for the outcome. A package promoting skills with financing support seems to have larger impacts on labor market activity. However, training alone can be quite useful to improve business knowledge and practice, and financing alone does well in enhancing business performance by releasing credit constraints.

4. For women, the largest effects come from providing access to credit, suggesting that access to credit may have been the largest constraint to women in their earning opportunities.

5. Involving the private sector for the delivery of programs and evaluating the program in the longer term appear to be more closely associated with improved effects of programs.

Policy Implications
1. Programs promoting self-employment opportunities and small-scale entrepreneurship can lead to increases in labor market outcomes with important welfare gains.

2. Providing relevant combinations of skills, capital, and counseling support based on the target group’s main constraints is important to achieve better results.

3. The impacts on both labor market and business outcomes are significantly higher for youth. This is especially relevant in many parts of the developing world that are facing the ‘youth bulge’ and aspiring to provide meaningful opportunities to their young populations.

The complete study available at The World Bank site here.

Read Here – The Diplomat

What happened in Bangladesh was the result of the safety standards that are currently in place not being enforced. As Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, told Democracy Now!, Bangladesh “already has some rules and regulations for safety,” with which some politically powerful owners are not complying.

SIR, I have met with much invective in the papers for these two years past, against the hard-heartedness of the rich, and much complaint of the great oppressions suffered in this country by the labouring poor. Will you admit a word or two on the other side of the question? I do not propose to be an advocate for oppression, or oppressors. But when I see that the poor are by such writings exasperated against the rich, and excited to insurrections, by which much mischief is done, and some forfeit their lives, I could wish the true state of things were better understood, the poor not made by these busy writers more uneasy and unhappy than their situation subjects them to be, and the nation not brought into disrepute among foreigners by public groundless accusations of ourselves, as if the rich in England had no compassion for the poor, and Englishmen wanted common humanity.

In justice then to this country, give me leave to remark, that the condition of the poor here is by far the best in Europe, for that, except in England and her American colonies, there is not in any country of the known world, not even in Scotland or Ireland, a provision by law to enforce a support of the poor. Every where else necessity reduces to beggary. This law was not made by the poor. The legislators were men of fortune. By that act they voluntarily subjected their own estates, and the estates of all others, to the payment of a tax for the maintenance of the poor, incumbering those estates with a kind of rent charge for that purpose, whereby the poor are vested with an inheritance, as it were, in all the estates of the rich. I wish they were benefited by this generous provision in any degree equal to the good intention with which it was made, and is continued: But I fear the giving mankind a dependance on any thing for support in age or sickness, besides industry and frugality during youth and health, tends to flatter our natural indolence, to encourage idleness and prodigality, and thereby to promote and increase poverty, the very evil it was intended to cure; thus multiplying beggars, instead of diminishing them.

Besides this tax, which the rich in England have subjected themselves to in behalf of the poor, amounting in some places to five or six shillings in the pound of the annual income, they have, by donations and subscriptions, erected numerous schools in various parts of the kingdom, for educating gratis the children of the poor in reading and writing, and in many of those schools the children are also fed and cloathed. They have erected hospitals, at an immense expence, for the reception and cure of the sick, the lame, the wounded, and the insane poor, for lying-in women, and deserted children. They are also continually contributing towards making up losses occasioned by fire, by storms, or by floods, and to relieve the poor in severe seasons of frost, in times of scarcity, &c. in which benevolent and charitable contributions no nation exceeds us. — Surely there is some gratitude due for so many instances of goodness!

Add to this, all the laws made to discourage foreign manufactures, by laying heavy duties on them, or totally prohibiting them, whereby the rich are obliged to pay much higher prices for what they wear and consume, than if the trade was open: These are so many laws for the support of our labouring poor, made by the rich, and continued at their expence; all the difference of price between our own and foreign commodities, being so much given by our rich to our poor; who would indeed be enabled by it to get by degrees above poverty, if they did not, as too generally they do, consider every increase of wages only as something that enables them to drink more and work less; so that their distress in sickness, age, or times of scarcity, continues to be the same as if such laws had never been made in their favour.

Much malignant censure have some writers bestowed upon the rich for their luxury and expensive living, while the poor are starving, &c. not considering that what the rich expend, the labouring poor receive in payment for their labour. It may seem a paradox if I should assert, that our labouring poor do in every year receive the whole revenue of the nation; I mean not only the public revenue, but also the revenue, or clear income, of all private estates, or a sum equivalent to the whole. In support of this position I reason thus. The rich do not work for one another. Their habitations, furniture, cloathing, carriages, food, ornaments, and every thing in short that they, or their families use and consume, is the work or produce of the labouring poor, who are, and must be, continually paid for their labour in producing the same. In these payments the revenues of private estates are expended, for most people live up to their incomes. In cloathing and provision for troops, in arms, ammunition, ships, tents, carriages, &c. &c. (every particular the produce of labour) much of the publick revenue is expended. The pay of officers civil and military, and of the private soldiers and sailors, requires the rest; and they spend that also in paying for what is produced by the labouring poor. I allow that some estates may increase by the owners spending less than their income; but then I conceive that other estates do at the same time diminish, by the owner’s spending more than their income, so that when the enriched want to buy more land, they easily find lands in the hands of the impoverished, whose necessities oblige them to sell; and thus this difference is equalled. I allow also, that part of the expence of the rich is in foreign produce or manufactures, for producing which the labouring poor of other nations must be paid; but then I say, that we must first pay our own labouring poor for an equal quantity of our manufactures or produce, to exchange for those foreign productions, or we must pay for them in money, which money, not being the natural produce of our country, must first be purchased from abroad, by sending out its value in the produce or manufactures of this country, for which manufactures our labouring poor are to be paid. And indeed if we did not export more than we import, we could have no money at all. I allow farther, that there are middle men, who make a profit, and even get estates, by purchasing the labour of the poor and selling it at advanced prices to the rich; but then they cannot enjoy that profit or the incomes of estates, but by spending them in employing and paying our labouring poor, in some shape or other, for the products of industry — Even beggars, pensioners, hospitals, and all that are supported by charity, spend their incomes in the same manner. So that finally, as I said at first, our labouring poor receive annually the whole of the clear revenues of the nation, and from us they can have no more.

If it be said that their wages are too low, and that they ought to be better paid for their labour, I heartily wish any means could be fallen upon to do it, consistent with their interest and happiness; but as the cheapness of other things is owing to the plenty of those things, so the cheapness of labour is, in most cases, owing to the multitude of labourers, and to their underworking one another in order to obtain employment. How is this to be remedied? A law might be made to raise their wages; but if our manufactures are too dear, they will not vend abroad, and all that part of employment will fail, unless by fighting and conquering we compel other nations to buy our goods, whether they will or no, which some have been mad enough at times to propose. Among ourselves, unless we give our working people less employment, how can we, for what they do, pay them higher than we do? Out of what fund is the additional price of labour to be paid, when all our present incomes are, as it were, mortgaged to them? Should they get higher wages, would that make them less poor, if in consequence they worked fewer days of the week proportionably? I have said a law might be made to raise their wages; but I doubt much whether it could be executed to any purpose, unless another law, now indeed almost obsolete, could at the same time be revived and enforced; a law, I mean, that many have often heard and repeated, but few have ever duly considered. SIX days shalt thou labour. This is as positive a part of the commandment as that which says, the SEVENTH day thou shalt rest; but we remember well to observe the indulgent part, and never think of the other. St Monday is generally as duly kept by our working people as Sunday; the only difference is, that, instead of employing their time, cheaply, at church, they are wasting it expensively at the alehouse. I am, Sir, &c. MEDIUS.

He’d been dating a girl for many months and I knew that he was wanting to break up with her but struggling with the how and when. So when he called me in tears one afternoon, asking me to pick him up at an off-campus location, I figured it was the break-up and it hadn’t gone well. In the car, I began the standard parent lecture, “Honey, I know it’s hard, but she’ll get over it in time…” to which he responded with “Mom, it’s more complicated than that.” And I knew.

That night, he asked to talk to me out of ear-shot of his little brother. We sat at the table on our back patio, and he said, “Mom, I don’t know how to tell you this. Can I text you?” I was a little late entering the world of texting, so could only say, “How do I get a text?” He shook his head with the same disbelief he always felt when I reminded him of my technological resistance then said, “Okay, I’m just going to type it into my phone and I’ll hand it to you,” and there it was…

I don’t like girls.   

I knew what he meant, of course, and poured forth with all the parental assurances that seemed necessary in the moment, but almost immediately, I started worrying about his next day at school. When he broke up with his girlfriend, he’d told her that he was gay and her response had been loud and angry. (Her previous boyfriend, she’d learned, was also gay. Little wonder that she was growing frustrated.) Students and adults alike had overheard the conversation, and I couldn’t imagine what kind of fall-out he might face.

Not much, as it turned out.

Friends and teachers offered only kindness and support—not one word of judgment did he experience in his next two years of high school. In fact, he went on to become “Head Boy” (equivalent of student body president that he shared with “Head Girl”), pushed the school’s commitment to environmental standards through the environmental club that he founded, and delivered a graduation speech to make any mother proud.

Times they are a-changin’.

 So, as I’ve said before, it comes as something of a surprise when I catch word of activity that seems to herald from some other time and place. From Laurel Ramseyer at Firedoglake, I read today that a Washington state senator is attempting another “License to Discriminate” bill. Frustrated that a florist is now being sued for refusing to sell flowers to a gay couple, Republican Senator Sharon Brown is asking for the bill in order to protect the rights of those who might need to discriminate on the basis of their religious convictions. Interesting. As a teacher I had convictions about testing, and my choice was to give the test or quit.

In Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, scholar Elaine Pagels explains how Augustine, the 5^th century “saint” who defined the direction of the Church and the Empire both in his lifetime and for many centuries after his death, had a conviction that all sexual desire, even that between a man and a woman, was unnatural and sinful. In fact, any spontaneous erection was a sin, even absent of intercourse. Ever so slowly, the church moved on from Augustine though I can’t help thinking… had legislators stepped in to defend Augustine’s convictions, a florist would have had the right not only to ask for a signed affidavit of virginity but of any male customer’s word that they’d never had an erection.

At some point, we look upon history, incredulous that it could have been so. And I think that’s the hope that I feel—that we have moved forward enough that a misguided florist and those of her ilk are, for the general populace of Washington, an embarrassment to their state, not the gay couple seeking flowers for their wedding. After all, Washington already killed a similar bill back in 2006. And Washington has other Republican legislators who might well cringe to read Brown’s bill. In fact, one of the most inspiring speeches I’ve heard on the issue of gay marriage came from Washington Rep. Maureen Walsh.

I get that perhaps it is dangerous to assume we have entered that space in time where we look upon a religious florist as the isolated lunatic screaming from the corner with whom we avoid eye contact, so uncomfortable are we with her bizarre behaviors. And I probably wouldn’t have the same thoughts if we were talking about a state in the South (I cringe to hear some of the stories at comingoutatmidlife.com and know my own story would be different were I still there). But I’m feeling optimistic. Perhaps my sons will look at these stories and say: Wow. Can you believe that happened in our lifetime? Perhaps.

For anyone interested in what’s happening in education (the effects of corporatizing the U.S. education system), PLEASE visit PBS education journalist, John Merrow.

The plans for technological facilities in Alhaurin de la Torre linked to Malaga Airport have met with support from local institutions who believe it will promote financial development and employment in the town.

With the help from EU founds of more then €3 million, the first two buildings are already going ahead in El Peñon-Zapata-Molina area.

It has complained that the Junta is damaging chances for creating work in the province and points out that Alhaurin de la Torre is the area which has made the most effort to develop a project which was authorized by the Junta.

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1. Stop thinking that ‘compliance’ is a word to keep international buyers happy and begin to understand that it has to do with the safety of people. People like you and me. People whose labor creates that shining Bangladesh in the first place. People whose actual labor builds your fortunes.

2 Stop shielding your members when these RMG owners build or rent deathtraps for factories; when they create a working environment where workers can get fired whenever, get paid whenever, get pay docked whenever; when RMG owners’ negligence result in loss of lives. Take an active role in ensuring that your member RMG owners are compliant.

3. Stop thinking the workers are out to get the RMG owners. They’re not. They’re happy if RMG owners have good business because that way they have work. RMG owners should make sure that the workers are content because their profits depend on them. Not all protesters are ‘paid troublemakers.’ Learn to listen.

4. Stop shifting the blame when a tragedy happens.Learn to look at it in the face: instead of pointing fingers at the buyers, the media, the government, the workers (!),  say we, as the association for RMG owners,understand that this is why this tragedy happened, and this is how we’ll make sure this never ever happens again. To anyone. Not on our watch. And make sure you follow through.

5. Behave like human beings, with human decency. It isn’t that hard. It might cost you a little bit in profits initially. But you guys are good with money. You’ll still have enough. You’ll survive.

Shabnam Nadiya is a writer and translator. She has an MFA from Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she is currently a Schulze Fellow. She is working on her collection of linked stories titled Pariah Dog.

© Taslima Akhter / taslimaakhter.com