Essay on Educating Prisoners
Today we live in a
knowledge-based era. Knowledge is the power, which can help us to overcome
obstacles and be successful in life. To acquire knowledge education is the mode,
education is capable of not only of changing a person’s life, but also of
transforming a country’s system. Education is a major factor, which is crucial
to helping prisoners change their lives and learn how to survive in society
without resorting to crime. Education for convicts is fundamental to achieve the
first objective of the criminal penalty, i.e. the rehabilitation and correction
of convicts, as it eradicates ignorance, a major factor for criminal behavior.
Therefore, it must be a priority for penal institutions to eradicate prisoners’
illiteracy and to help them resume their education. By mastering a trade or a
profession, learning a skill, and acquiring good work habits, a prisoner can
greatly improve his chances of successfully integrating into society upon
release.
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Research conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number-crunching arm
of the U.S. Department of Justice, shows that two important factors affecting
the likelihood that an individual will become a criminal are a lack of education
and lack of employment opportunities. With the national recidivism rate
exceedingly high as it is, and with nation's penitentiaries are fit to bust, it
is past time we petitioned the government at all levels necessary to institute
or expand quality educational programs. This move would facilitate reducing the
crime rate and recidivism as well as easing the taxpayer's burden.
According to John Linton (state director of correction education at the Maryland
Department of Education) “We educate inmates in prison so that they will be
something other than inmates during subsequent phases of their lives” (Linton,
1998).
Consider the following real-life stories accounted by E. Currie (Currie, 1985):
William Brown, at the age of eight, found himself in prison, withdrawing cold
turkey from a heroin habit. In prison, he taught himself how to read and write.
He went on to receive his GED, and an AA degree, and pushed to earn a BA, MA and
PhD. Now Dr. Brown teaches criminal procedure at West Texas University. He was
appointed to a two-year term to represent the Association on the Board of the
National College of Criminal Defense.
This is just one example and no one can dispute the valuable opportunities
education has given the inmates who chose to accept this gift. Education
frequently allows prisoners to realize that there are more options in life than
continuing their life of crime. The statistics show that education helps
prisoners to avoid crime after their release. A study by the Arizona Department
of Adult Probation found that “probationers who received literacy training had a
significantly lower re-arrest rate (35%) than the control group (46%), and those
who received GED education had a re-arrest rate of 24%, compared to the control
group’s rate of 46%” (Siegal, 1997).
Why Education
It is the education that changes prisoners’ views of the rules of social
behavior and raises their awareness of the importance of respecting these rules.
Education paves the way for better job opportunities after their release from
prison and is an excellent way to use their time in prison. Skilled and educated
prisoners are much more likely to earn incomes above the poverty level.
Moreover, a skilled worker is generally a confident, industrious worker and thus
a productive citizen. Once educated, a prisoner is not a burden to any one in
the society. Education boosts self-confidence and has a marked tendency to
produce leaders rather than wanderers or worse, misguided followers. In
addition, educated men and women prisoners are empowered and thus become
obligated to perpetuate civic humanism, i.e., the act whereby one takes what
he/she has learned back into their respective communities and shares it with
those who can likewise benefit. Best of all, perhaps, is the simple fact that a
sound education for prisoners does more to induce solid, moral character than
does any other discipline save religion. By causing these changes in the
prisoner, education, in turn, has great effects on the recidivism rate, the
amount of taxes citizens spend on incarceration, and, ultimately, country’s
economy. Here are few statistics by ‘The Nationwide Dismantling of College
Programs in Prisons’, which shows a remarkable affirmative impact on Inmates:
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• 93% of prison superintendents strongly support educational and vocational
programming in adult correctional facilities.
• A national review of 20 empirical studies reveals that higher education in
prison dramatically reduces re-incarceration rates for both men and women.
Inmates who attend college while incarcerated have significantly higher rates of
employment (60-70%) upon release than those who do not (40%).
• College-in-prison transforms students’ sense of themselves, their sense of
responsibility and their personal commitments to “giving back” to family and
community. College paves the way for healthy transitions out of prison.
• College-in-prison positively affects the children of men and women in prison.
Seventy-five percent of women in New York State prisons are mothers of children
under the age of 18. National studies confirm that the education of a mother is
the best predictor of the educational attainment of a child.
Statistics show that over half the prisoners released will return within three
years (Cutshall, 2001). But prisoners who receive education are 20% less likely
to return to prison than the general prison population (Cutshall, 2001).
Educating prisoners is the single most effective method of reducing the
recidivism rate (Bole, 1996).
From remedial reading programs to advanced degrees, education can play a
prominent role in reducing crime and recidivism, and consequently, decreasing
the tax burden.
Not only, society and government is helping inmates when they provide education,
they are helping their country to become a more prosperous nation.
Why Education system fails
Despite the educational and career programs available to inmates, recidivism
rates remain high. Which gives an edge to the critics who think educating the
Inmates is a burden on economy. This is not to say that some positive programs
or education opportunities do not exist within the prison system. But many
inmates find it nearly impossible to retain the positive aspects of such
programs when constantly bombarded by such intense negativity. The prison
environment itself and the negative experiences gained while locked up must be
considered as major factors contributing to those recidivism numbers. The more
overcrowded, noisy and dangerous the prison, of course, the less conducive it is
to education.
Besides that there are numerous arguments against the education of prisoners.
Some critics say that educating a prisoner is a burden on tax payers or society
why should they pay taxes when they are not getting any affirmative results in
return which is not true. Another opinion is that educating a prisoner is
softness on crime it allegedly produces, and the ludicrous concept that to
educate prisoners is tantamount to turning nation's penal institutions into
schoolhouses rather than bastions of punishment. It is said that educated people
not only commit white-collar crime, but also simply illustrates that an
education is no guarantee of the absence of criminal behavior. In fact, some
would argue that educating those prone to criminal pursuits only makes smarter
criminals.
The correction systems, as most government agencies, are on a stringent budget.
Correctional education programs are usually the first in jeopardy because they
are considered expendable unless proven cost effective. But the value of inmate
reform cannot be measured solely by money or taxes. Approximately 90% percent of
the current prison population will someday be released to live in the society we
are living in. Should those people who will be our future neighbors living with
us and our children, do we want those people to be uneducated, unskilled,
unemployable and likely to return to crime?
Conclusion
Building more prisons and jailing more people has not deterred crime, as
evidenced by a recent U.S. Justice Department study. On the contrary, recidivism
rates increased during a time when national prison population doubled. Continued
investment in education, particularly post-secondary education, is the fiscally
and socially responsible alternative.
The positive effects of education on an inmate’s character reach far beyond the
progress of the inmate himself and even the prison system he is in; they extend
to and benefit the society into which he enters after his release from prison.
All of this research dovetails to show one reason that education reduces
recidivism education helps ex-convicts find employment, which provides an
alternative to criminal activity, thus keeping them from returning to prison.
Perhaps one of the graduates said it best: “Education has taught me the value of
persistence, patience and dedication. It has helped me understand that there are
no limits to our dreams. And if we keep our focus on those dreams, they will
happen.” (Jeanne Kohl-Welles, 2002)
Education provides a means by which prisoners can turn their lives around. It
helps them to avoid crime after their release by increasing their self-esteem,
giving them responsibility, helping them to become role models, and, most
importantly, helping them to see that they have options other than crime.
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