The Daily Curio
Curio #489 - Turning overcrowded prisons into a solution
An amusing fact for November 4, 2014 from Justin Kitch, Curious CEO
Talk about a creative solution for prison over-crowding. Brazil's federal prisons are so full that officials have created two early release programs allowing inmates to read or pedal their way to freedom. First, prisoners can knock four days off their sentence for each book they read from "literature, science, philosophy, or the classics." Don't worry, they must also provide an essay using paragraphs, proper grammar and legible writing. Inmates who don’t feel like reading can bike their way to the "outside" instead. They get one day of early release for every 16 hours spent pedaling special bikes that power street lights. Now if they just keep arresting people, Brazil is going to have the most literate and well-lit population in the Western hemisphere!