Prison education

Prison education, also known as Inmate Education and Correctional Education, is a broad term that encompasses any number of educational activities occurring inside a prison. These educational activities include both vocational training and academic education. The goal of such activities is to prepare the prisoner for success outside of prison and to enhance the rehabilitative aspects of prison.

Educational programs offered inside prisons are typically provided and managed by the prison systems in which they reside. Funding for the programs are provided through official correctional department budgets, private organizations (e.g. colleges, nonprofits, etc.), and the prisoners or their families, if the prisoner is pursuing education through a correspondence program. Educational opportunities can be divided into two general categories: academic education and vocational training.

Academic education

Academic education usually is provided in the form of GED or literacy classes.^[1] These free classes assist the prisoner in learning to read, write, and perform basic mathematical computations. This is especially important in a correctional setting because, compared to the general population, prisoners are an under-educated group – who maintain less than 5th grade proficiency in reading and writing ^[2] – coming from a culture of poverty, with few skills for handling everyday tasks, and little or no experience in a trade or career.^[3] Hence, many require significant remedial help before they can attend more advanced educational classes.^[4] Academic education in prison is to prepare the prisoner to take the official GED tests – the official high school diploma equivalent – and to hopefully further their education with more advanced studies.

After the student earns a GED, they are then usually offered the opportunity to further their education through in-prison programs. This continued education is coined Adult Continuing Education in the federal prison system and is also free to participants. These are courses which are led by inmate-instructors and encompass any number of topics. For example, at FCI-Petersburg, the Education Department offers Writing and Publishing, Personal Finance, Spanish, Basic Math, Legal Basics, and more.

There is growing support for better reentry strategies and other means of lowering recidivism rates by bringing higher education back to prisons.^[5]

College level education is also offered. In-person college-level programs offered through partnerships with local colleges and universities is the most effective,^[6] Due to funding and staffing concerns the most used form for teaching college courses in prison is through mail correspondence.

Education helps with the most onerous obstacle to keeping out of prison—finding gainful employment. Legitimate employment is the basis for other requirements on the outside, including the ability to pay for housing and food. Holding a degree or certificate is a boost to these effort. Pell funding holds an added potential of making religious programming, study, and training more widely available. The expansion of religious programming is a boon for prison culture since involvement in religion is associated with positive outcomes for prisoners, including lower recidivism, improved self-esteem, and movement away from gang subcultures. Increased opportunity for religious study is a unique aspect of education known to transform the lives of inmates. This is likely due to the content of religion itself. As religion deals with ultimate issues, including one’s worldview and morality, religious education may be a special ally in the quest for rehabilitation.^[7]

In 1994 Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA). A provision of this Act overturned a section of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The provision reads, “No basic grant shall be awarded under this subpart to any individual who is incarcerated in any Federal or State penal institution.” Without Pell Grants, prisoners have to pay for the educational services themselves. There is growing advocacy for reinstating Pell Grant funding for all prisoners who would qualify, despite their incarceration status. Perhaps the most prominent statement has come from Congresswoman Donna F. Edwards along with several other members of the House of Representatives who introduced the Restoring Education and Learning Act (REAL Act) in the spring of 2015. At the executive level, the Obama Administration is backing a program under development at the Department of Education that would allow for a limited lifting of the ban for some prisoners called the Second Chance Pell Pilot.^[8]

Vocational training

Vocational training offers more opportunities in the prison setting, despite the restricted setings. Much of what is offered will depend upon the local prison's programming. For example, at FCI-Petersburg, inmates have the option to learn Computer Aided Design, Carpentry, and a number of other vocations via "live work" employments (e.g. plumbing, electricity, landscaping). In the case of FC(-Peterburg, these are free to the prisoner-participants. However how they are paid for is dependent on funding priorities for the larger prison system.^[9]

Inside the prison setting, the prisoner can usually enroll in vocational correspondence education, although they may have to pay for the cost of these programs themselves. Programs include things such as legal studies, mediation, religious studies, and much more. All costs and fees are the responsibility of the individual prisoner and usually run from several hundred dollars per course to several thousand per program of study. Vocational training via correspondence is almost exclusively less expensive than correspondence academic education.

It is generally recognized that it is more difficult to operate vocational education programs inside a prison where security concerns are more important than educational goals, particularly in trades where it is easy to manufacture weapons. Nevertheless, some prisons systems, such as those in California, are able to offer courses which meet accreditation requirements of community college systems.^[10]

Statistics

The United States, with an incarcerated population of 2.30 million, has the largest prison population of any country in the world.^[11] The US spends approximately $52 billion on corrections each year, with the cost of providing a college degree to an incarcerated student at $2,000 to $3,782 compared to $32,000 to $40,000 per year to incarcerate the same individual.^[12] Each dollar spent on funding prison education programs reduces incarceration costs by $4 to $5 during the first three years after an individual is released, the period when those leaving prison are most likely to return.^[13]

An American study found "One million dollars spent on correctional education prevents about 600 crimes, while that same money invested in incarceration prevents 350 crimes. Correctional education is almost twice as cost-effective as a crime control policy".^[14]

Funding Allocation

California

There are different types of educational materials in the prisons system. The programs that are available are Adult Basic Education I, II and III, GED attainment, technical (vocational) classes and college courses.^[15][16] According to CDCR, all of these courses fall under the broader topic of rehabilitation programming in the prisons system. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) the Rehabilitation Programming includes:

1. academic and educational opportunities
2. career technical education
3. substance abuse treatment (SAT) programs,
4. Offender Mentor Certification program (OMCO),
5. Long Term Offender Pilot Program (LTOPP)
6. Story Time Program
7. Transitions Program
8. Cal-ID Card Program
9. Residential Multi-Service Centers
10. Expansion of Day Reporting Centers in Communities
11. Specialized Treatment for Optimized programming
12. Peer Reentry Navigation Network

According to the funding allocation report from California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation the funding for rehabilitation programming was allocated $462,329,000 (less than 5%) of $9,857,983 ,000 of the total budget.^[17] The CDCR report did not provide information how the money was distributed among the various Rehabilitation Programs. Looking at just college courses in prison, there are 5,879 incarcerated people that are enrolled in college courses,^[18][19] This means that less than .5% of people incarcerated in California's State prisons are enrolled in college courses.

Reductions in recidivism

Recent research on prison education programs presents discouraging statistics on the current recidivism rate. The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) reported in 2011 that nearly 7 in 10 people who had been incarcerated will commit a new crime, and half will end up back in prison within three years. Given that about 95 out of every 100 incarcerated people eventually rejoin society, it is crucial that there are educational programs in the prison system.^[20] Not only is it important to develop programs in prison that are educational but if recidivism is a goal then there also needs to be support programs in the community to support the reentry population where they can either continue their education or get assistance in finding a sustainable job.^[21]

Many studies have shown significant decreases in recidivism. "The more educational programs successfully completed for each six months confined the lower the recidivism rate" according to Harer (1994), in his Federal Bureau of Prisons Office of Research & Evaluation report.^[22][23]This has not necessarily been backed up by more recent research in California which shows that while prison vocational education programs do help with improving behavior in prison, there is no strong evidence that this leads to reduced recidivism relative to prisoners who have not been in such programs.^[24]

Personal development

To those afforded the opportunity to further their education, it "may be the first glimmer of hope that [they] can escape the cycles of poverty and violence that have dominated their lives".^[25] Pursuing an education can also undo some of the damage accrued during their stay in prison; it can awaken senses numbed and release creativity that is both therapeutic and rehabilitative.^[26]

With good skills and an education, released prisoners have a better chance at moving on with their lives despite their criminal record. 75% of college-educated ex-prisoners are able to find stable employment.^[27] Employment helps ex-prisoners stay out of prison, despite the formidable obstacles, including the social stigma of being an ex-con and state laws that bar them from professions requiring licensure. They will be dealing with these obstacles for the rest of their lives.

Benefits of giving college level education to prisoners

More than half of all inmates in the United States serve maximum sentences of less than eight years, and many are released well before their sentences are completed. In New York State, forty percent of all inmates who are released will wind up back in prison within three years. An inmate’s ability to make it on the outside depends on whether he is returning to a stable family, whether he has mental health or substance abuse issues, and on his education and employment-related skills.^[28]Prison education used to be up to college level and in 1990's they shut it down because of the cost and funding issues.^[29] but the most efficient way to keep people out of prison is to teach them some skills or give them education while they are serving their time. if they do that then once an inmate finishes his/her time they will be able to find a job and move on with their life. President Obama created a pilot program that will allow a limited number of inmates to receive federal Pell Grants to take college courses behind bars. The program will include colleges that either run prison education programs or want to start them. So far, more than 200 schools in 47 states have expressed interest.^[30]Not all states are interested in breaking with the failed policies of the past. In New York, for example, raucous opposition in the Legislature led Gov. Andrew Cuomo to withdraw a sensible 2014 proposal that would have set aside a mere $1 million in a state corrections budget of $2.8 billion to finance college education programs behind bars. Members in the Legislature argued that the proposal was “a slap in the face” to law-abiding taxpayers, when in fact it represented a clear cost savings for those same taxpayers.^[31] The cost to incarcerate an adult is $35000 per year and the cost to educate per individual is only $2500 per year. RAND corporation did a research and found that prisoners with education are 43% less likely to return to prison. every $1 spent on education, $5 is saved in reduced re-incarceration costs.  ^[32] Most of these inmates finish their time and come home live in our societies. so if we give them education it will be a big change toward our good and our society.

See also

• Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act#Elimination of inmate education
• Prison blogs

References