Why Do We Deserve Second Chance?

Recently, I ran across a video of Cornell University's Prison Educational System's graduating class of 2014. In the video, I watched as men and women walked across the stage to receive their degrees and later to hug their families. As the video continued, there were several brief interviews with the new graduates, who often spoke about how thankful they were to have the opportunity to do something great for themselves despite their current living situation. Watching this video made me smile. It's not often that you associate an ivy league university with prisoners, but this is something we definitely need more of in the world. Cornell University, by providing an opportunity for these prisoners to pursue an education, gave each of these prisoners a second chance at life.Unfortunately,when someone goes to prison, they don’t only serve their sentence, they also serve the lifetime of shame associated with the crime they committed. …show more content…
In order to save time, we rely on the answers on an application that applicants provide to decide how we treat and view them. If a person notes that he or she has had trouble with the law, we shut down and write this person off as a bad person. When we do this, we are simply reducing people down to a single moment in their past rather than who they are at this very moment. It's flawed logic to think that you can minimize a person down to what a piece of paper says; however, it's something we continually do. This type of rapid judgment is extremely dangerous because of the message it sends to society. This communicates that what truly matters is the conclusions that can be drawn about someone based on his or her record, not if a person has learned from their