Work Ethic Camp in danger of becoming just another prison?

The editorial board of the McCook Daily Gazette at the time was unanimous in its support of the programs at McCook's Work Ethic Camp, and that opinion hasn't changed.

Our communities accepted the workers with glad hands and they responded in kind, and throughout those early years, crews could be seen working on a variety of projects in McCook and the surrounding communities.

We even cautiously favored the admission of those who had earned enough good time to qualify for early release to come to the camp, where they could finish their time while taking advantage of the programs.

Then someone checked the laws, found that work crews couldn't legally work for schools and non-profits, costing the opportunity to give the workers a thumbs up as they worked their way through the issues that brought them here to begin with.

That injustice has been partially corrected, but work crews have yet to reappear at their previous levels.

Things have changed dramatically, with little fanfare, and it may be time to step back and evaluate those changes.

Two young men from Omaha, both convicted of felony robbery, a class 2 felony, were sentenced to three years of intensive probation and have been sent to the Work Ethic Camp. We understand that prison over-crowding is a serious issue in Nebraska, largely due to the un-winnable war on drugs, and we understand that in these two cases, the WEC may be the best sentence possible to turn these two young men around.

However, if the Nebraska Department of Corrections is planning a sea-change in the sentencing parameters for the WEC, perhaps making it a male-only facility, then it first needs to address security from the bottom up, before anyone else convicted of violent crimes is sent here.

The WEC is still a minimum security facility, and offers inmates perhaps their best chance at turning their lives around, through the programs and through the opportunities to engage in positive, productive work.

If the WEC becomes just another business-as-usual prison, with the accompanying and sobering recidivism rates, everyone loses.