From prisoner to Supreme Court practitioner
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It's nice to see someone make good after screwing up.
1) Rehabilitation and its benefits can't be as simply explained. In politics, where the other side will be scrutinising your every word for something they can twist out of context, simple = good. You want a simple message and you want to repeat it endlessly.
2) There are powerful interests that benefit from the current prison system - private prison operators and prison guard unions to name two.
3) Rehabilitation won't always work. If you endorse it, and even one prisoner gets out and rapes/murders someone your opponents will drag your name (and career) through the mud. "Person X would still be alive today if not for Candidate Y!" sort of things.
You seem to be assuming that rehabilitation would work, if it weren't for {insert bogey-man}. How about some evidence beyond "wouldn't it be great if we rehabbed more folks?"
> And, it's getting easier and easier to do a background check - so, a single misstep in life and it basically eliminates your chances to every recover.
If you're correct that ex-cons are a tremendous untapped asset, there's a huge economic advantage to tapping them. Why do you think that "everyone" is ignoring that resource if it's actually real?
Note that most felons in the US have a long history of "not felonies", a history that most people don't have.
In the (paraphrased) words of Law and Order "His parole officer says that he's a good kid" "Yeah, all the best kids have parole officers".
Not many people will really find a profession that they click with the way that he has regardless of whether or not they are in jail.