Saturday, July 14, 2012

Should prison inmates be allowed to take college courses?

Some people might think it is a bad idea, or even a waste of money, to educate prisoners. Really, in order to truly rehabilitate a prisoner and give them a real opportunity to succeed once they are released we should consider it. Or else, they will be more likely to continue down the same path. I, personally, think it would be a better option to educate our prisoners than to pay for them to sit in our prisons.

If you look at the general population of state prisons in the United States, only 12.7% of them have any college education at all, according to The Bureau of Justice Statistics. In the population of free people in America, 48% of those have at least some college education. It is very apparent that the people that are filling our prisons are under-educated. If they had some education, their chances of building a productive life and staying out of the prison systems would be significantly higher.
What’s worse? If you look at the education levels of the prison population that was on death row in 2005, only 9.2% of them had any college what so ever. Of the same population, 65% of them had prior felony convictions. This means that 65% of them have gone through America’s criminal rehabilitation system and it didn’t work for them.  That 65% was released, and later ended up back in prison and on death row.
I understand that people sacrifice a lot of time and money for their education. But in the end, it would be cheaper to educate these people than to keep throwing them back in prison. According to LairdCarlson.com, “On average state invest as much as ($24,000) supporting their students’ public school earned baccalaureates as they spend annually ($25,000) incarcerating their prisoners”. Also, if they are incarcerated multiple times that price of incarceration multiplies exponentially.
To me, it would be a much better option to educate our prisoners than to pay for them to occupy our prisons. Save the state money by educating prisoners. In turn, they might not kill you and end up on death row for doing so.
 

Works Cited:

The Bureau of Justice Statistics. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov               1/19/2011
Taylor, Jon Marc. Pell Grants for Prisoners. http://www.lairdcarlson.com 1/19/2011

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