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.
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