So perhaps not surprisingly, many reentrants fail. According to federal statistics, within three years, two-thirds of reentrants will be arrested again, and almost half will be back behind bars.

  This is not only a humanitarian crisis. America spends $60 billion a year on this so-called corrections system.

  What’s to be done? For at least ten years, policymakers have been calling for attention to reentry, and in his 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush announced a small federal initiative (as yet mostly unfunded) to assist reentrants with jobs, housing, and mentoring. But this is a problem that goes beyond just federal solutions. According to a survey in five large cities, 65 percent of employers said they wouldn’t knowingly hire an ex-con. Dozens of professional groups, including manicurists and barbers, have barred ex-cons from their ranks. Most public housing bans them, too.

  These people could have been a political force. Nearly every state denies felons in prison the right to vote, but about a dozen states revoke felons’ voting rights permanently, even after their sentences are finished. In the 2004 election, about 5 million people were disenfranchised due to felony convictions. George W. Bush’s margin of victory over John Kerry was only 3 million votes.

  In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by half a million—but had the 400,000 former felons in Florida been able to vote, scholars have concluded, he would have won the presidency, too.

  The people who are really bearing the brunt of felons’ returns are their families, who, by the way, tend to be pretty tightly concentrated. One study in Ohio found that 3 percent of Cleveland neighborhoods were home to 20 percent of the state’s ex-prisoners. Who’s tending to the oak trees in those neighborhoods? Who’s supporting the people whose yellow ribbon commitments could actually make the difference between successful reentry, and a return to the slammer?

  There are also the children. In the 1990s alone, the number of children with a parent in prison rose by more than 100 percent—from 900,000 to 2 million. Now, given the reentry surge, we’ll have an ex-con baby boom—and given the likelihood of reentrants returning to prison, the number of kids with incarcerated Moms and Dads is only likely to grow.

  We made the people who did the crime do their time, but they’re coming out now with all-around low prospects and bad social habits, and we need a plan that involves both help and supervision.

  The original tough-on-crime proponents would say it is not a coincidence that with all these ex-cons returning, crime is—after fifteen years of decline—back on the rise. But the link just points out how seriously we need corrections reform. Some statisticians have attributed the 1990s drop in crime to Roe v. Wade many years before, but more likely it was a combination of the 100,000 cops put on the street by President Clinton, new intelligent police methods, and stricter sentences. In any event, we are now moving from being the free country with the most people in jail per 100,000 to being the free country with the most people released from jail per 100,000.

  Unless we figure out how to make ex-cons employable, and put job training at the top of the list, this will be a very destructive cycle. Unable to get a job, returning convicts will find they have limited options, and slip back to what they know best, even if they weren’t very good at it.

  Newly Released Ex-Cons is a microtrend that government and business need to get going on right away. Taking more criminals off the streets only works while they are off the streets—but without a souped-up public-private partnership to reach out to returning felons, we will simply go through another cycle of more lockups and higher crime, once they have done their time.

  PART VII

  Teens

  The Mildly Disordered

  When only a minority of Americans went to college, people didn’t worry so much about students’ different “learning styles,” or what may have been actual learning disabilities. If nuanced verbal expression wasn’t your thing, you could make a living by lots of other means.

  But now that most good-paying jobs in America require college—and most colleges require high-level thinking—there is suddenly greater attention to the skill with which all students read, write, spell, reason, recall, and organize information. And as a result, there has been an explosion in the number of young people diagnosed with learning disabilities, neurological disorders, and other previously unattended to conditions.

  To be sure, youth with learning disabilities are not to be confused with severely mentally ill kids, who, sadly, are also on the rise. (Childhood autism has increased 9-fold since 1992. The number of children being treated with antipsychotic drugs shot up 138 percent between 1997 and 2000.) No, most kids diagnosed with learning disabilities today suffer from subtler conditions that would likely have gone undetected a generation ago, but now—thanks to advances in child development research and to more intense scrutiny on the part of parents and schools—are being found out.

  The difference is clear as early as toddlerhood. A child who, twenty-five years ago, would have been considered “irritable” is now likely to be diagnosed with Sensory Integration Dysfunction, a condition wherein a child’s brain over- or under-perceives sensation, causing lights to seem too bright, noises to sound too loud, or clothes to feel too itchy.

  A child who, twenty-five years ago, would have been considered “nonathletic,” may well be assessed today with “motor-planning” challenges, or an underdeveloped mental capacity to move from conceiving of a physical movement to executing it.

  The new classifications of disorders keep expanding. And so by the time toddlers get to be children and teens, the number of them being diagnosed with problems related to reading, writing, speaking, listening, and math simply explodes. In the past thirty years, the number of kids served under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act definition of “specific learning disabilities” has gone up 82 percent.

  Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2006

  No one is sure whether it’s just that we’re paying more attention that we’re finding more nameable problems. There are very likely environmental and other factors contributing to the surge. But there’s no doubt that once we examine, label, and classify kids more closely, we see more problems.

  And who is encouraging the most scrutiny? The affluent, of course. While learning disabled kids span the spectrum of family incomes, it is practically a fad in the upper middle class. (Who else, after all, would spend serious time and money to find out why their kids are merely average?)

  Today’s most elite, expensive schools offer not just teachers, but also “learning specialists” who attend to each child’s developmental milestones. Readin’, writin’ and ’rithmetic today generally also includes a focus on attention spans, sensory integration, and motor planning. The ironic result is that whereas in low-income communities, “special ed” often signals a doomed academic career, in affluent communities, not having an occupational therapist, speech coach, or social-emotional counselor by the time you are 12 is practically a sign of parental neglect.

  Just look at the SAT. Between 1990 and 2005 alone, the number of students granted extra time to take the SAT doubled, to over 40,000 of the nation’s 2 million test-takers. And you can’t just get this time with a casual request. You have to have documented proof of your learning disability from a psychologist, plus proof that you have been using all the accommodations recommended by that psychologist on your regular high school tests. Who’s getting all that? You can bet it’s largely the families with the time and money for specialists, evaluations, and treatments (not to mention the advocacy skills required to seek out and secure the extra time).

  And so, as of 2005, more than 40,000 high school juniors are taking extra time on the SAT. That’s numerically equivalent to the entire entering freshman classes at the main campuses of Ohio State University, the University of Texas, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of North Carolina, the University of Virginia, Oral Roberts University, Vanderbilt, Texas A&M, and Yale. Combined.

  And where affluence is, industry follows. The intense scrutiny of parents has propelled after-school tutoring into a $4-billion-a-year industry, with 15 percent annual growth. Both Sylvan Learning Centers (now with more than 1,000 sites nationwide) and the Kaplan-owned SCORE! Educational Centers have started offering tutoring not just to struggling teens, and ambitious tweens, but to 4-year-olds whose super-conscientious parents are already worried they are falling behind.

  If I were living in a country now that was just beginning its push for universal college, I would invest in its equivalent of Sylvan Learning Centers. A decade from now, after-school tutoring, and toddler catch-up, will be all the rage.

  Watch, however, for the “Disorder Divide.” While regular folks may still see a stigma in kids’ disabilities related in any way to the brain, the affluent wear them like a badge of honor, aggressively explaining why their children undercompete.

  And watch for the impact on children in general. With so many more affluent kids regularly sent to specialists and diagnosed with disorders, it may be that society’s “best and brightest”—the youth most likely to get good educations and go to college—are subtly internalizing the message that they need a great deal of outside help to be “normal.” Already the Millennials, born after 1980, are the most medicated generation in history. Now that they are in college, studies show that of the nearly 1 in 10 college students who seeks mental health counseling, 25 percent are on psychotropic medicines—up from just 9 percent in 1994.

  Some will say I’ve exaggerated the focus on new childhood disorders. But the explosion of new conditions starts at birth. In 2005, the main medical manual on the mental health of infants—that is, babies aged 0–3 years—was revised to include two new subsets of depression, five new subsets of anxiety disorders, and six new subsets of feeding behavior disorders. So parents are starting young.

  Americans are comforted by the idea that any setback their child faces is not self-inflicted, but rather the result of an outside and previously undiagnosed hardship that must be overcome. The testing system has become something of a game, now that everyone knows that tutoring makes such a difference in scores—so any parents who can get extra time for their children are just playing the game another way. Hey, what’s wrong with that kid? Hopefully something—but nothing too serious. That is the answer that opens up extra help, extra time, and a little extra attention. And that is the answer more and more kids are turning to as the explanation for why they are not performing as well as they could or should.

  Young Knitters

  My 4-year-old daughter is getting ready to apply to kindergarten, and I was recently looking through the Web sites of some of the hottest private schools in Washington, D.C. One of them streamed footage of an extracurricular offering for seventh-graders in knitting. Knitting? In the twenty-first century? In the nation’s capital? Were they kidding?

  Alas. It is I who was out of touch.

  In a nation where you can buy sweaters and scarves at Kmart for under $15, something like 20 million people in America are knitting their own. And the fastest-growing groups of people who knit (that’s with two needles) or crochet (that’s with one, hooked needle) are teens and 20-somethings.

  Source: Craft Yarn Council of America, 2006

  For an activity that is twenty-five centuries old, knitting is very hip.

  This trend is, of course, doubly counterintuitive. When you think knitting, you think grannies in rocking chairs; and when you think teenagers, you think all-tech all-the-time. And yet there they are, 6 million junior high and high-schoolers in America, clicking and purling away, led by fabulously trendy knitters like Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

  Practically overnight, knitting has gone from frumpy to chic. There are knitting blogs, T-shirt campaigns to “Take Back the Knit,” and Knit-Outs (and Knit-Ins) that attract tens of thousands of people in cities all over the country. Scripps Howard’s Do-It-Yourself Network features Knitty Gritty, a weekly romp through crafting patterns marketed as “fresh, fierce, and fabulous.” VogueKnitting has just launched a magazine for knitters under 25. Debbie Stoller’s Stitch ’n Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook, made the New York Times best-seller list in 2004 and has sold something like 100,000 copies. A sequel, Stitch ’n Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker, sold 25,000 copies in its first couple of months.

  Teen knitters aren’t some reclusive, anti-technology faction. Thousands of members of MySpace, the wildly popular social networking site, affiliate with knitting subgroups, suggesting that today’s teens are comfortable with having their high-tech and low-tech sides—well, meshed together.

  Even a few boys are getting into the act. Crafts experts estimate that about 4 percent of needlecrafters nationwide are men, with teen boys in particular increasingly sporting homemade caps for chilly mornings of surfing and snowboarding. (If Cameron Diaz isn’t their role model, they can look to football great Rosie Greer, who apparently knitted and needlepointed on the sidelines between plays. According to www.MenKnit.net, women have falsely assumed credit for the history of knitting; it was actually male fishermen who first made heavy sweaters for the high seas, and male soldiers who mass-produced warm socks in World War II.)

  But if we are fighting over the heritage of knitting, it’s clearly way hipper than we thought. So, who put the vogue back in knitting needles?

  In general, the rise in knitting may be part of a larger “nesting” trend that took place after 9/11. Cooking shows shot up in popularity, as did family reunions, and tips for making life simpler. Handicrafts in general got a lot of play (with sewing machines doubling in sales between 1999 and 2005), and, in particular, knitting—with its regular, rhythmic stitching—is said to relieve stress and lower blood pressure. Ex-smokers swear it’s helped them quit. People use phrases like “the zone” to describe the experience of knitting, calling it the “new yoga” and the “new meditation.”

  It’s therapy, with a hat to take home afterward.

  But for young folks, the appeal of knitting is even greater, combining the best of a few of their worlds. Knitting is social like MySpace, with groups gathering to do it communally—and enjoy the conversation that has apparently flowed from it for twenty-five centuries. It is skill-oriented, like video games—with the chance to take on increasingly harder challenges and get intense satisfaction from accomplishing them. And in today’s self-defining, self-actualizing teen world (which comes in handy when positioning oneself for college), handmade clothes and accessories can be a smart, creative way to brand one’s unique identity.

  On top of all that, who doesn’t want a nattily designed cell phone case, bikini top, or guitar strap, handmade by you or a friend?

  But there’s more. Just like the grown-ups who knit to relieve stress, teens, too, are increasingly looking for a break from 24/7 connectedness and from the college-prep intensity that can begin in pre-K. In some cases, adults are seizing on this need on behalf of youth, urging knitting upon them as a way to improve focus and concentration, strengthen creative thinking, and build math and motor skill development. Some sites claim that knitting calms ADD. The independent Waldorf Schools have made knitting part of their grade school curriculum.

  So this is another story of how for every action, there is a reaction—for every high-tech movement, there is a low-tech movement embraced by millions of people. And it underscores the basic idea that even though, on the one hand, people find their time is limited, many are looking for calming distractions. And that in a service economy, people want the pleasure of creating something themselves and being able to say, “I made that.”

  The implications of Youthful Needlers are sizable. In the crafts marketplace itself, there is likely to be a growing demand for richer colors, jazzier patterns, and “fashion yarns,” which are fuzzier, furrier, lacier, and more metallic than the ones that composed your old gray crew neck from L.L. Bean. According to the Craft Yarn Council, between 2004 and 2005 alone, fashion yarn purchases rose 56 percent.

  Within the world of fashion, we should expect more knits on the runway, and more handmade looks in haute couture. I, for one, didn’t know they could make hand-knit bikini tops—but then, until recently, I also didn’t know that ten new Knitting “Meet-Ups” were forming per week in cities all over America.

  However, the real significance of Teen Knitters is that techie clichés notwithstanding, many of today’s kids have longer attention spans than we give them credit for; and they are passionate about creating—not just cyberprofiles, but also tangible, useful products that mark their presence in the world. They can click and drag with the best of them, but they like the click-click-click of knitting needles, too.

  Move over Madame Defarge, whose knitting of shrouds for the victims of the French Revolution made her one of the most famous (and villainous) knitters in literature. Today’s knitters are neither old nor “crafty” in the villainous sense; they’re stitching and purling because it’s peaceful, practical, physical, and people-oriented.

  Which also suggests that as teens today turn from one fad to another, there is room for a lot of make-it-yourself products. Nike just launched a Make Your Own Sneaker kit, complete with custom colors and fabrics. Companies are offering new ways for people to design their own makeup, and engagement rings. But how about guys making their own ties? How about jeans-making kits, so kids can put rips in all the right places? As people are customizing their bodies, and ordering customized monogrammed polo shirts, the market is wide open for knitters, and for new ideas that let people both relax and have something they can just slip on just after they’re done.

  Black Teen Idols

  There is perhaps no group in America more stereotyped than teenage boys—and in particular, black teenage boys. In 2002, the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families found that over 90 percent of news stories covering youth in America focus on crime, violence, abuse, and neglect, compared to fewer than 5 percent that focus on constructive topics like child care, child health insurance, or youth volunteers. In the media, teenagers are bad news.