it’s a crime not to get involved.

Here’s a great vintage commercial for the PACE Institute at Cook County Jail. Its central mission was providing elementary and secondary education- it was accredited through the local school district. This commercial emphasizes the job training, which as I understand it, was a fairly temporary element of their programming. The 1970s were a time when the jail dramatically increased its public profile through programming, perhaps most famously through concerts that brought B.B. King and other stars to perform there. It’s interesting to me that this commercial ran in a moment of deindustrialization- the sub-text here is that in spite of that shift, access to industrial jobs could keep people out of jail. In a neoliberal world where jails and prisons house many excess workers who can’t find a place in the legitimate economy, it’s hard to imagine a commercial like this on television today.

Transcript:

“It’s called a mug shot. Next to being the victim of a crime, it’s the most degrading experience there is. Did you know that a lot of the guys in Cook County Jail have been there ten times, and a lot more would have been through it again if it hadn’t have been for PACE. What’s PACE? It’s an educational organization working inside the walls of Cook County Jail. Teaching inmates how to do something more useful than jimmying locks or picking pockets. They help the men develop skills and trades that will help them find jobs on the outside. The fact is that only twenty-three percent of PACE graduates have returned for another mug shot. Compare that to seventy-five percent overall. And that means PACE is doing something for the victims of crime too. Write PACE, Cook County Jail. The way I see it, when you’ve got something like PACE that works, it’s a crime not to get involved.” (1978 PSA, via fuzzymemories.tv)

Here’s a screenshot from a 1981 report that shows the scope of PACE’s programs.