Governments and other stakeholders across the globe should spend more budgets on prison education programs.
Prison education has been a sensible issue for all walks of life that it is relating to everyone’s life. The historic idea behind the prison education program traces its origin to “1920s, when Howard Belding Gill, a criminologist and a Harvard alumnus, developed a college-like community at the Norfolk State Prison Colony in Massachusetts, where he was the superintendent. Prisoners wore normal clothing, participated in cooperative self-government with staff, and took academic courses with instructors from Emerson, Boston University and Harvard. They ran a newspaper, radio show and jazz orchestra, and they had access to an extensive library” (Elizabeth Hinton, 2016).
Some people, opposing the idea, argues that “they waste taxpayer money on educating criminals, give convicts a competitive edge over law-abiding citizens in the job market, threaten prison security by encouraging protests and escape, defeat the purpose of serving a sentence and even make “smarter criminals” (Natalie Proulx, 2018). Heather Ann Thompson, a professor of history at the University of Michigan and the author of “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy.”, wrote that “Slaves weren’t allowed to read because reading would directly lead to rebellion” (Mzezewa, 2018). This history-killing idea resulted in banning thousands of books dealing black studies and the African-American conditions. Despite those opposing arguments on the prison education, still, there are the positive arguments that are viewed through the humanistic, economic and socio-educational lens.
Elizabeth Alexander, a poet and Wun Tsun Tam humanities professor at Columbia University said, “Denying people the right to read, especially books that reflect their own lives, goes deeper than politics. Every living human being has the right to be able to understand the condition of their life. Anything short of that is cruel” (Mzezewa,2018).
Ms. Hinton, an Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Yale University and Professor of Law at Yale Law School, writes that “education is a civil right that improves society and increases civic engagement.” She added that this would be a boon to prisoners across the country, a vast majority of whom do not have a high school diploma. And it could help shrink our prison population. While racial disparities in arrests and convictions are alarming, education level is a far stronger predictor of future incarceration than race (Hinton, 2018).
Aside from such scholastic opinions on the prison education, there is a voluminous finding that shows the far-reaching impacts those inmate education programs have on the community as a whole. According to Bozick, Steele, Lois Davis and Susan Turner (2018), it is found that “Individuals who enroll in postsecondary education programs are 48% less likely to be reincarcerated than those who do not, and the odds of being employed post-release are 12% higher for individuals who participate in any type of correctional education.”
Another significant finding suggests that for every $1 spent on correctional education, $4 to $5 are saved on reincarceration costs. Additionally, individuals who complete college courses are eligible for higher-paying jobs compared to people without a college education (M.Davis et al., 2014). Beyond the dramatic fiscal benefits, there is a compelling socio-educational advantage. Sturm and Nixon (2015) found that “Individuals returning home from prison with college credentials play an important role in encouraging family members and friends to pursue additional education.”
In conclusion, despite some views that the prison education would lead to the burden on the taxpayers, that it derails the purpose of serving a sentence and that it gives a privilege to the crime-makers over the law-abiding citizens, it is undeniable that the prison education plays a pivotal role in the process rehabilitation and renewal, and the reduction in the rates of recidivism. It also brings the great fiscal and social benefits on the taxpaying citizens. Those are the facts that should be taken into consideration for the lawmakers and stakeholders across the globe in distributing more budget on the prison education programs. From the humanistic point of view, it is not just about training people into the marketable employees; it is about humanization and about coaching them to understand what it meant to be a human and to understand the world around them.