You know, first of all, when you don't have a lot of money, you learn to do this stuff by yourself. Like I did. My dad was all thumbs, but my grandpa was good.
But as I became a young man and wanted a new baseboard and casing and put toilets in and vanities in, you learn how to do it. Even before YouTube, you follow the directions. But during a part of my career, I oversaw training of inmates in the LA County jail system, largest in the country.
And we had, you know, what we called, you know, trades classes, which weren't really trade classes. We're just getting free labor out of guys. And I was in charge.
I completely revamped them and focused them on how to, how to effectively learn the trades and then leave the jail and go do them. Like, for example, we used to have a bunch of painters and I changed it so that they, to pass the class, they had to go into a room, measure it out, figure out how much paint it would take, figure out the cost for labor and paint, and then paint it. And by doing that for every job, when they left prison or jail, they could go out on their own and be a painter.
Did the same thing for masonry. Did the same thing for carpentry. The guys who were going to masonry school, because you could do math and teach math through masonry and carpentry.
So it's trade skill math, right? And once you went, once they started learning that, and if you could also get them sober and managed to show up to work without cussing out their bosses, they were leaving jail and they were getting good jobs at $40 an hour and particularly skilled trades. So it isn't, it isn't just that we should be teaching our young men who, you know, obviously wasn't doing anything wrong. We should be focused on this stuff, even for those who- What was the impact on recidivism? Well, you know, the thing about treats and trades is you have to hit the soft skills too.
