[higherpayusa]

If you believe prison is for "punishment" and that prisoners are "fundamentally bad" then the answer is no - don't let them do anything that could improve their lives. However, if you believe prison is for "rehabilitation" and that "people can change" then exposure to current tech, within reason, would be good thing. I vote for the latter, mainly because almost everyone who goes in comes out.

And now for the off-the-rails part of my answer... maybe we could limit prisoners to outdated technology - they might end up with decent jobs maintaining old mainframes or Cobol or Fortran - somebody is going to have to do it and a lot of the old school guys are retiring.

[school_lunch]

That was actually kind of my thinking. There's a huge demand for these technologies at lower salaries than your tech hot spots, so most younger talent won't be interested in learning. Yet a 60K a year job would be AMAZING to the average felon.

[Fjolsvith]

Uh, this is unrealistic. I came out of prison with programming knowledge and not a single company would consider me because of my record. Its why I have a shed manufacturing business now.

[school_lunch]

I think a program like this would have to work to build relationships with organizations, and it would be an uphill battle.

Perhaps focusing on very specific skills, like test coverage and documentation would be more amenable to an organization than DB Admin.

[Fjolsvith]

Its a security risk. Allowing a felon access to the company network is irresponsible.