Prison Program Aims To Turn Criminals Into Coders 305
Press2ToContinue writes with news that San Quentin, a notorious California prison, has started a program to teach a class of inmates to write code. The first class will last for six months, and the inmates are learning about programming for eight hours a day. The hope is to give them the skills to find a good job after they leave prison, which in turn would reduce their chances of recidivism. Since the state's Dept. of Corrections prohibits internet access, the class only "pretends" to be online — they can't use internet-based resources, and nobody on the outside can see or use the software they create. One of the class's backers said, 'Almost every week there's epiphanies. And most of the guys in here, they've never touched a computer before. They are progressing beyond our expectations."
Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what we need more of! Computer-savvy criminals!
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For those who still want to believe that there's a long-term future in coding ... how DO you plan to compete with people who have no debt from education and will qualify for massive job subsidies?
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
For those who still want to believe that there's a long-term future in coding ... how DO you plan to compete with people who have no debt from education and will qualify for massive job subsidies?
You mean the ones that will probably never get hired because of their criminal record?
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Did you jump the rails? Are we talking about H1-Bs again?
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I believe you a </quote>
From Wiki [wikipedia.org]:
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly permits felony disenfranchisement. But it has been pointed out that constitutional approval of felons' political powerlessness is not the same as constitutional approval of government prejudice toward the politically powerless. Such prejudice may violate the Equal Protection Clause, which contains no provision authorizing discrimination against felons. A "discrete and insular" minority subject to prejudice, in particular, may be considered particularly vulnerable to oppression by the majority, and thus a suspect class worthy of protection by the judiciary.[6]
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
[...]
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
You're confusing protected minorities with non-protected ones.
Protected ones are race, religion, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation.
Non-protected ones are smokers, criminals, nihilists, believing the earth is flat, which teletubby is your favorite and MANY more.
If you could easily get jobs with a criminal record there would probably be less recidivism. Making a law that forbids you from not hiring criminals would however be quite stupid. If you embezzle money, it would be pretty dumb if they couldn't discriminate when hiring for an accountant position you were otherwise qualified for.
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
Other countries do it, and have far lower prison populations per capita. 40% of all working-age Americans have a criminal record. Do you really want them all to be unemployable, and having to return to crime to survive?
Believing that it is not possible for someone to reform is a self-fulfilling prophecy when you then also enact policies that actively drive them back to crime. Not too smart, especially when many of the crimes are minor. How do you expect a sex worker to get out of the trade if you cut her off from the alternatives that are open to everyone else? Or anyone else who has a criminal record, for that matter?
We had a police captain here who was caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker. Arrested, convicted, did his time, and while inside learned how to be an accountant. Got a job while living in a half-way house. Now he's a tax-payer again. Win-win for everyone.
Or you can keep building jails. Just remember, you're the one footing the bill for it.
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40% of all working-age Americans have a criminal record.
If that's true ... then it's including some very violent subcultures. But we can't say that, of course.
Maybe we need to change the violent subcultures, instead of trying to shame people for not wanting to hire ex-cons.
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Re:Of course! (Score:4, Informative)
I think this is the statistic he's talking about [huffingtonpost.com].
psst - s/he/she/ :-)
No, this one [diversityinc.com] (partial quote only)
The FBI estimates that 50 percent of its criminal records contain errors. No HR professional wants to hire a person with DUI convictions to drive a vehicle or someone convicted of child abuse to work in a school. But disqualifying every applicant with a criminal record for every job is unnecessary.
This is especially true because of profound changes in the criminal-justice system. When I was 17, I punched another young man in an argument in the local pool hall. The security guards promptly "escorted" me to the manager’s office. The manager called my father, who assured the manager that if he would allow my father to handle the situation, I would never enter his establishment for the rest of my life. To this day, I have never returned. If my son were to repeat my foolish mistake, he would unquestionably be arrested for assault and battery, and the conviction would follow him for the rest of his life. Literally millions of people in the United States today have criminal records because they were caught smoking marijuana at a rock concert 10 years ago, accidentally bounced a check, or got into a shoving match with another driver after a fender bender. Many of these people can be excellent employees.
Consequences
Refusing to hire anyone with a record is not only unnecessary, it takes a huge bite out of the applicant pool. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 30 percent of America’s adult population has a criminal record. Among people of working age, about 40 percent have criminal records. For some demographic groups, the rate is even higher. More than 50 percent of Black males have a criminal record. As the United States’ demographics continue to change, the problem presented by using criminal records as an employment screen will continue to grow.
Enforcement of the law is still highly selective. How many banksters went to jail?
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Informative)
Appears to be false; the statistic of 40% relates to the percentage of American men who have been arrested by age 23, not the percentage of working-age Americans with a criminal record. It includes juvenile arrests for status offenses (e.g. truancy, underaged drinking) and also arrests for which there was no conviction.
I've been arrested (twice, even), and I do not have a "criminal record". First arrest all charges were dropped and the arrest record expunged, second arrest was for a matter not rising to the level of a criminal offense (NYC ordinance "violation"); I took adjournment in contemplation of dismissal (does not require an admission of guilt).
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You mean young black males? Plenty have said that. But violent crime is responsible for a minority of the prison population, and a much smaller minority of convictions, and so those with criminal records. A huge number have records for non-violent drug offences.
It would be a lot easier to abolish the War on Drugs, given its blatant failure, than to change subcultures. Though cutting the flow of drug money wouldn't hurt.
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I made no value judgement about whether or not it was a good or a bad thing.
Employment is one of the largest factors in recidivism, but the jails themselves are another large factor. They most often are not "correctional" institutes, but universities for how to become a better criminal. I think a large part is that for the longest time they were merely to punish and not much thought given for afterwards. The US is well behind in this regard when compared to European prisons.
There is a reason that US prisons
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I don't, and most non-horrible people don't, but the prison-industrial complex does, and that's the enemy here.
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Sexual orientation isn't one of the "protected species". Sex (meaning mostly female) is though. Disability also isn't enumerated in the Constitution however there is the Americans with Disability Act that covers them. So to restate it they are race, religion, age, national origin and sex.
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If you could easily get jobs with a criminal record there would probably be less recidivism. Making a law that forbids you from not hiring criminals would however be quite stupid. If you embezzle money, ....
If you have committed robbery, drug trafficking, DUI, sexual offenses, etc, we don't want you on our property, as our staff would feel uncomfortable knowing that their safety may be at risk due to having to work with some potential violent criminals, let alone trying to apply for a position.
We have cu
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Informative)
Since such discrimination is illegal, and the government (and society) has an interest in getting these people jobs, expect any suspected discrimination to be challenged in the courts.
[Citation needed]
It's NOT illegal to discriminate against ex-cons. Otherwise, how it is that so many companies get away with running criminal background checks? Are you saying that all these companies pay to run background checks but then can't actually use them in the hiring decision process??
Things are changing a bit, though, and it is getting a little harder to discriminate overtly. For what's really happening, see for example, here [bloomberg.com]:
Federal labor laws do not explicitly prohibit companies from discriminating against ex-offenders. ... Most of the rules spelling out what an employer can and can't do come from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is stepping up scrutiny of employer hiring practices. Corporate policies that immediately screen former criminals can disadvantage minorities and violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the agency says. In April 2012 it issued a "guidance"--a set of rules for companies to follow in evaluating job applications of released prisoners. The guidelines "create a burden on the employer to do a more individualized assessment" at the start of the hiring process, says Andria Lure Ryan, a labor lawyer in Atlanta, and not simply weed out ex-offenders from the start. The agency acknowledges there are valid reasons why some employers--a day care center, for instance--might not want to hire someone who has committed certain kinds of crimes. In such cases, the guidance says rejecting those applicants is OK. And there are federal regulations against hiring people convicted of violent crimes for jobs in airport security, among other fields.
In sum -- there's no explicit law against discriminating against ex-cons. It *IS* illegal to discriminate against minorities, and since a disproportionate number of ex-cons are minorities, the federal government has said businesses need to be careful.
In practice, however, what this means is now many companies tend not to do a background check immediately upon receipt of an application, but rather do some sort of interview or other screening first, then only do the background check later in the process.
At that point, employers still often toss people out of the pool of applicants for previous convictions. There's no federal law preventing that, particularly if the company gave them "fair consideration" early in the process before doing the background check. (Some states and cities have more policies to prevent such discrimination, such as the "Ban the Box" movement [wikipedia.org], but if a company can justify running a background check, it's hard to prevent discriminatory actions.)
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Maybe it's time to see how other countries
...
You can stop right there. We don't care what other countries do, because they'll all eventually have McDonalds, Pizza Hut and diabetes.
The world will be reforged in America's own image!
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It is not illegal to deny employment on the basis of criminal background. That's the very reason so many employers do background checks. It doesn't necessarily disqualify a person but it certain can be used in the decision making process.
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You mean the ones that will probably never get hired because of their criminal record?
Why get hired when you've just been taught how to hack into bank accounts?
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and with main talents like low to average IQ, poor impulse control and shitty judgment.
We should make them politicians, they would fit right in.
Re:Of course! (Score:4, Funny)
Not only that, but they are already used to working in a 6x4 cell!
Re:Of course! (Score:4, Insightful)
For those who still want to believe that there's a long-term future in coding ... how DO you plan to compete with people who have no debt from education and will qualify for massive job subsidies?
... and won't pass any corporate background checks. I think it is great to teach inmates anything that could help them lead a productive life after prison. But personally I would start with professions where background checks are not common.
It seems improbable for people with few job skills to come out of prison to get $50k/yr jobs as developers. I would be happier if prisons spent times training inmates for more realistic jobs where they may only make $18/hr, but will actually have a chance of being employed.
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
They will probably pass a law saying you cannot discriminate against prior convictions or something unless you can demonstrate some need for security that requires it.
The Governor of Ohio is already trying something similar. He's expanded or trying to expand professional license qualifications to convicts who have been trouble free for an amount of time. He said something about how do you expect recidivism to be low when released prisoners cannot even get jobs they can likely support themselves on. I'm not aware of any specific legislation but I saw him bring it up in a couple speeches.
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There is only one reason to hire a criminal, and that is planning to do something criminal. That way, if you get caught, you can play innocent and shift the blame on the ex-con because, ya know, once a crook always a crook and all that.
Else, why hire some ex-con when there's 100s battling to get that job? No, I didn't discriminate against him, that other guy just had better qualifications. Because, uh, I do value that experience he has in ... hell, we'll find some tech in his resume that he did the ex-con d
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, there's also the situation where the ex-con is actually good at what he does. Back in 2010 I did some contract work for a large and established company (big/old enough to have a pre-ARIN
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Well, that could happen to me, too. .aikido, no other martial arts. And the german courts are notorious for convicting the defender in 'a bar fight' for using 'excess violence' because they don't grasp the fact that being educated in a martial art does not give some super human powers to subdue a drunk violent guy who feels no pain and is in rage without hurting him. :)
I only do
Anyway, if you colleague put someone into hospital I wish that guy either deserved it *or* if not, he learned to hold his temper
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What about the possibility that the employer just didn't happen to like any of the others that he interviewed? You might get hundreds of applicants, but will probably interview only a dozen or so... what if the one with a criminal record happened to still leave the best overall impression?
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Else, why hire some ex-con when there's 100s battling to get that job?
What about the possibility that the employer just didn't happen to like any of the others that he interviewed? You might get hundreds of applicants, but will probably interview only a dozen or so... what if the one with a criminal record happened to still leave the best overall impression?
In an ideal world, that's what employers might (should?) think.
In the real world, employers often have to worry about things like liability. You have an application from someone saying they committed a crime in the past. If they commit a similar crime again while doing anything related to that job, could you be held liable? You had prior knowledge that this person might be dangerous/unstable/willing to commit whatever (fraud, deceive customers, etc.), and then that person did it again. Are you respons
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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He committed the worst crime of all: Getting caught.
Because, well, why should the employer give a fuck if he's hiring a crook as long as said crook knows how to avoid getting caught?
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How about the fact that knowledge of it might make the employer uncomfortable? Or is the law allowed to dictate which people we are and are not allowed to dislike? At best, all they can do is say that the employer is not allowed to ask about such convictions.
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Well, I started out thinking there wasn't a law on the books yet, but here is some of what was done. I guess sealing the record is one thing.
http://www.cleveland.com/open/... [cleveland.com]
and
http://www.ideastream.org/news... [ideastream.org]
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not if the government is the one suing, because it's in the interest of society as a whole to make it possible for former criminals to actually be rehabilitated and contribute to the system.
Considering that 40% of the adult American working-age population have criminal records [diversityinc.com], many of them for completely stupid and banal offenses, do you really want to make it so impossible for someone to be honest that they have to return to crime just to eat?
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As opposed to murder, theft, arson, bribery, etc. Hell, you can be rejected now for just having been arrested for possession of pot. I certainly wouldn't want a convicted felon, guilty of robbing a bank, *working* for a bank. They can get another job. It doesn't have to be working with people's money. Good damn reason not to want them doing that. You seem to be purposefully conflating "stupid and banal" with vicious and dangerous.
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The majority of Americans with criminal records are for minor offenses.
I doubt a bank robber would want to work in a bank, knowing that every time something goes wrong, their name will immediately be put at the top of the "sh*t list."
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
As a convicted felon who served 2 1/2 years in prison and have spent the last 10 years working for ATT and IBM, I'm going to have to disagree. I make over $100k per year and I deserve it because I'm a good engineer regardless of my past criminal record. There's no reason they should not make as much as you and I if they have the skills.
When I was in prison, I actually tried to learn programming and was denied the opportunity to even read coding books because the department of prisons said it would make me a smarter criminal. So I went back to college when I got out and got my degree in computer science. I think the shift in the emphasis on training and education are absolutely critical to keeping people out of prison. Period. There is no other way. Prison as a punishment simply isn't enough to prevent crime or recidivism. People need something positive to strive for instead of constantly struggling to survive.
So, if you're a convict - do not give up! Educate yourself and be persistent and it will pay off, I promise.
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So, if you're a convict - do not give up! Educate yourself and be persistent and it will pay off, I promise.
Unless you know of a few dozen of your fellow inmates who also pull in 6 digit salaries, I think you are a bit of a rare success story. That is great, and rare success stories do happen. For instance I flunked out of college, worked as a shift supervisor at a fast food restaurant until I was 24, and still crossed the $100k barrier as a software developer by the age of 32. But I sure wouldn't advise average college drop outs that they are likely to have the same lucky success I did. For instance there were a
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For those who still want to believe that there's a long-term future in coding ... how DO you plan to compete with people who have no debt from education and will qualify for massive job subsidies?
The same way I compete with developers with little to no college debt today (median student loan debt is still only around $10k), and who live in the cheap neighborhoods near me instead of the high property value township I live in. By being better than they are.
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Re:Of course! (Score:4, Interesting)
If they can hire 10 really motivated coders (and after a few years in "the big house", they'll be motivated), for next to nothing after taking into account subsidies, for less than 1 of you, many will take the chance, because the bottom line is the bottom line.
They can already do this now with foreign labor. And they can already hire 4 low quality recent college grads for the same price as well. But they don't, because they don't want to deal with a large team of people causing their bosses more headaches than they are worth. They don't want to deal with inaccurate data on their corporate reports, support cases which are orphaned in the database, or business users who refuse to use their new CRM/ERP systems since it is too buggy to be useful. They want someone who fixes problems, not people who create them.
Many pointy hair bosses aren't smart enough to realize the value of quality employees, but enough of them are.
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Funny)
For those who still want to believe that there's a long-term future in coding ... how DO you plan to compete with people who have no debt from education and will qualify for massive job subsidies?
By not having a felony conviction?
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I don't believe that my education and experience is comparable to that which would be received in prison, which makes me think there wouldn't be much direct competition to me. If anything, something like this would seems (likely to me) to result in the massive, lower skilled end, of tech work being sent to prisons or half-way houses inside the U.S. as opposed to being shipped outside the U.S. This seems like a good thing.
I've worked on numerous projects that were shipped outside the country, to MUCH cheaper
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Eventually, some of these "low-rate bottom-of-the-barrel" coders will get better, same as you were once not so hot at what you do today. This will drive wages down, same as always when the supply/demand curve has more supply than demand. Same as all these initiatives to teach everyone to code whether they want to or not.
Perhaps it's time to think ahead and figure out what, if anything, your next career will be.
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It probably doesn't matter since there's no long-term future in general.
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Most of these people will not be able to get good enough fast enough to keep up with people who are already in the field.
In the long run we're all dead, so I wouldn't worry too much about the truly long-term prospects in any field of work unless I'm giving advice to kids.
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I don't worry about it because I don't buy into the bullshit idea that anyone can do anything if they just have the opportunity and apply themselves.
Many of the same attributes that make someone a good programmer act in directly opposition to those shortcomings that make someone a criminal (the capriciousness
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This also applies to many Europeans, because we do not have to pay large fees for university. But beside that, your upside is that you have most likely not the stigma of being a criminal and it is like those times during New Economy when they trained jobless people to become programmers. Truck drivers, carpenters etc. We had such people in our company as trainees. They didn't fit at all and they were not able to solve puzzles on their own. So don't worry. If you have good university grade CS degree or any o
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Good luck with that background check. The more likely scenario is they come out of it with a new skill but nobody of any real importance will hire them because of their criminal record.
In the best case scenario they find some work with someone willing to take a chance. In the worst case, they're unemployable and start using those skills to further criminal activity.
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Who may still owe 50k in restitution?
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Obligatory joke,,, (Score:3)
...about capitalism doing it the other way around.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Funny)
Are we going to use them for NSA contractors, coders for various banks and such? Maybe let them write software for various government contracts right? Great idea!!
Accountability (Score:2)
Are we going to use them for NSA contractors, coders for various banks and such?
I'd trust a reformed ex-com before I'd trust the NSA and 'various banks'...one has at least has had accountability and rehabilitation
you're a fool if you think otherwise
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Many cops in the UK have criminal records, it doesn't seem to be an impediment to employment for them.
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True in some cases, but not as a blanket statement. The EEOC says an employer's policies regarding one's criminal history cannot be used as an employment criteria if:
They significantly disadvantage Title VII-protected individuals such as African Americans and Hispanics; AND
They do not help the employer accurately decide if the person is likely to be a responsible, reliable, or safe employee.
I had a former co-worker that was convicted of felo
"Pretends to be online"? (Score:2)
the class only "pretends" to be online
In what way - and why - does it "pretend" to be online?
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they post snarky comments in their web browser which dumps them to dev/null and notifications with static text like "love u 4 ever dog" keep popping up on their desktop.
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they post snarky comments in their web browser which dumps them to dev/null and notifications with static text like "love u 4 ever dog" keep popping up on their desktop.
The real tragedy will happen once they've finished paying their debts to society and they get full access to the Internet with no one having told them not to read the comments.
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Because it's on a physically isolated network with its own server. /edited and then put on to the network by the staff.
All documentation and resources required for the course have to be sourced checked
BBC Click Online did a segment on it last week.
Actually, I'd like to see the reverse of that . . (Score:5, Funny)
When I am sometimes debugging some " programmers' " code . . . I think that the programmer belongs in jail.
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Wow, you work at a good place then. ... :-/
We usually think about dragging the responsible person into the basement, keeping him there for a few days in darkness and then torture him.
The milder cases we want to drag outside and simply shot in public
Unfortunately both practices are rather unpopular in germany since 50 years
No Internet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: No Internet? (Score:2)
The problem with that is now coding is about reusing as much as possible. If it takes 10 weeks to write a library or 10 seconds to download some open source library then the guy who takes 10 weeks is going to get schooled by the the guy who takes 10 seconds.
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Really, I think that the internet can be a huge distraction.... and, if cut off from the internet, I would probably do my best work!
Agree... but I fear I would be inventing a wheel that already exists :)
So much coding today is finding libraries and stitching them together...
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Enough is enough: I've had it with the motherfucking code on the motherfucking plane!
Re:No Internet? (Score:5, Funny)
Code on a plane; it's wonderful.
Just don't use Python.
Not just programming (Score:4, Funny)
While we are at it, lets teach them chemistry, horticulture, and forensics too.
That way, they will have the skills to become professional criminals when they get out, instead of the amateur criminals they were when they got caught originally.
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America is falling behind compared to malware production overseas:-)
Incidentally, our country had a very similar program about twenty years ago.
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*facepalm*
The whole point of giving them skills is to give them a realistic chance of going straight when they get out. If they come out of prison and are unemployable they will fall back into crime. If they can build some kind of non-criminal life instead the stats suggest that most do.
How about teaching them management skills (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, they are already criminals, the rest should be easy.
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I mean, they are already criminals, the rest should be easy.
Precisely. There's often a lot of talk about allowing blue-collar workers to be empowered to transition or work their way up to white-collar jobs -- through education, training, etc.
So why not train blue-collar criminals so they can work their way up to white-collar crime? They need a career after all. And dealing drugs on the street corner is not a way to pay your bills, let alone moving up in the world. Why be stuck mugging people and earning $20 or $50 or whatever, when they could be embezzling, co
Tuition-Free (Score:2, Informative)
"Yes, your honor. I did attempt to attack the police officer with a piece of fruit. I deserve to be sentenced for say, oh. Hm.... Two semesters".
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As we all know fruits can be a dangerous weapon, especially bananas. I saw a British documentary on that topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
However, people got shot for less by policemen in the US.
j/k (Score:2)
apt-get update
Connecting to..... lol just kidding.
Dupe from Nov 25, 2013 (Score:5, Interesting)
This story already appeared on Slashdot back on Nov 25, 2013. So how many ex-con coders have been hired since then? How successful is this program? Given the prevalence of really short "boot camp" coder training programs, many cohorts of these ex-con coders should have been released from prison (they're not training lifers or long-term convicts, are they?) and established themselves in the workforce. We should have some hard numbers by now about how effective this program is.
Good grief! (Score:3)
J.O.B.
Do that first.
Of all the money spent on this program, I predict exactly 1 person will actually end up with a job as a 'coder'. (and he will suck at it)
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The converse is that what is so special about coding compared to other things that people think it shouldn't be taught?
Can't add, Illiterate (Score:2)
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In a related news... (Score:2)
Could certainly make "scrums" more interesting ... (Score:2)
Criminals? No, not for coding... (Score:2)
..."Enterprise Software Systems Architect". "Framework Analyst". "Data Modelling Architecture Consultant".
These are the positions that suck $200/hour out of your accounts as they ask you to explain for the fourth time how you manage your list of projects and track their progress and pay their bills. Tens, then hundreds of thousands will disappear like Danny Ocean and the Boys had visited your bank, as your hoped-for upgrade to your Access application is turned into a web-based app with 20-second resp
What's next? (Score:3)
Who will we teach to "code" next?
Babies? Nursing home residents? Beagles?
what could possibly go wrong (Score:2)
I am all for rehabilitating of criminals. But you need to be careful about the way you do it.
Obligatory jailbreak joke (Score:2)
They better watch what they google for.
Background check: FAIL (Score:2)
I've never had a "good" programming job that didn't require a background check. The odds of a convicted criminal getting a job at any of those companies is ZERO.
I got our cats to start coding.. (Score:2)
But so far I only have them using sandboxing. The next steps are going to be harder.
It's just the reverse of the cubicle system (Score:3)
idiot (Score:3)
it's wrong *not* to give them the basic services humans need
their rights have been revoked...so they are "wards of the state" and must be treated humanely