Once again, the New York Times shows itself ready to demand that the taxpayers show compassion to and shower freebies upon the lawbreakers and criminals among us.

With the nation’s incarcerated population at 2.1 million and growing — and corrections costs topping $60 billion a year — states are rightly looking for ways to keep people from coming back to prison once they get out. Programs that help ex-offenders find jobs, housing, mental health care and drug treatment are part of the solution. States must also end the Dickensian practice of saddling ex-offenders with crushing debt that they can never hope to pay off and that drives many of them right back to prison.

Yeah -- how dare they make the punishments meted out by the criminal justice system so punitive!

Why should criminals be expected to pay their back child support from when they are in prison? The taxpayers should do that for them!

Why should criminals be expected to pay the costs of their incarceration? The taxpayers should do that!

Why should criminals be expected to pay the costs of the special services and monitoring required of them as a part of their sentences? The taxpayers should do that!

And while they are at it, the taxpayers should provide all sorts of special programs for them, free of charge, that the get simply for having committed a crime! Jobs, housing, and medical care, all for the small cost of a year or two behind bars!

They say that crime doesn't pay -- but the New York Times clearly thinks it should.

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