Over at Governing, Zach Patton misses the point of the "HELP WANTED: Stop the Killings in Newark Now!" billboards paid for by the Newark Teachers Union, and the Newarker sets him straight. The ads are a shell game, of course, saying in effect that if crime is high, then Booker has no right to reform the schools.

Staying in Newark, John McWhorter asks what's to be done with the ex-offenders flooding back to the city—"There is, of course, a certain diversity among those returning to Newark, New Jersey, just not enough that matters. Ten percent are not men. An even smaller percentage are not black. There are few who read above the sixth-grade level. About one in five do not have a drug addiction problem, and about one in 20 had some vocational training behind bars. Three years after they return from prison, only one out of three will not have been arrested again."

Paul Howard argues that the debate over prisoner re-entry "will be a replay of the debate over welfare reform," a case also made by Peter Cove here at Cities on a Hill in his essay Can Recidivism Reform Do For Men What Welfare Reform Did For Women?