That just blows my mind.  

I'm a firm believer that actions have consequences - this is the sort of universe that God has created, one where cause and effect work together in some pretty convincing ways.  If you do something wrong, there are any number of consequences that may flow from that action.  Prosecution and incarceration are one - but by no means the only - possible effects.  Given the rates of recidivisim, it would seem that, at the very least, they are the least effective effects, assuming that the goal is to deter people from a life of crime.  

That's a big assumption.

A valuable key in changing people's lives is actually committing to, within the best of your ability, changing their lives.  This means that while punishment may need to be imposed, it ought not - except in the most extreme circumstances - be perpetual.  If we wish people to act differently in the future, it's going to require (along with a personal committment to change) society being willing to treat them differently.  And that's a hard thing to ask of a society, apparently. 

Primarily, it means once again making ourselves vulnerable.  Taking a risk in hiring someone that might choose to take advantage of our willingness to help.  It means we might be played for someone else's advantage, discovering too late that we were being fed a clever line to keep us happy, and allowing the other person to act in ways completely unacceptable.  But the alternative to taking this risk, is to never offer anyone anything, on the off chance that we might be taken advantage of.  In which case, everyone loses.

Christians specifically are called to the difficult task of forgiveness.  Not that forgiveness nullifies the repercussions of actions in this world.  We might forgive someone and they still might need to go to jail to learn their lesson.  But the deeper goal of forgiveness is the reintegration of community, the healing of bonds broken through distrust or abuse.  The goal is not simply the changing of an offender, but the strengthening of community as a whole.  The goal is the affirmation of the value of every human life, that every person is valuable as a creation of God's, and we are not given the right to selectively refuse to acknowledge that worth in others. 

In our steady march away from the Christian faith which this nation was forged through and with, it becomes easier and easier to take up the secular arguments that there is nothing special about mankind.  We're just another animal.  Just another blip on evolutionary radar.  And along with that, are a plethora of logical deductions that are quickly and rather easily made.  If human life has no intrinsic value, then it is not wrong or evil to write off parts of humanity who fail to meet certain expectations.  If human life has no intrinsic value, then we can manipulate sectors of the population for the benefit of other sectors.  Those who behave inappropriately can be consigned to second-class status indefinitely.  Or the unborn can be classified for use in plundering cells and eventually body parts (once we have cloning in place) for the benefit of others.  An entire class of humanity bred solely for the benefit of another class.  Once upon a time we called that slavery.  Now we call it progress.

It's clear that punishing our prisoners simply to punish them is not helping anyone.  Not the prisoner, not the community that must pay for that prisoner through taxes, and not even the victim.  Surely there ought to be a better way of seeking to affirm the dignity and worth of all people - even those who have made a mess of their lives to a certain extent.  Not everyone will be willing (or able) to accept this offering, and we're not going to eliminate recidivism.  But stories like this one should offer a hopeful alternative that more lives could be salvaged than with our current approaches.