Uh, oh. Those intellectual know-it-alls are at it again.
This time they’re trying to say that schooling is better than jail.
They’re trying to persuade the rest of us that some prison inmates are actually better off in classrooms taking evening classes, even college-level courses, than they are sitting back cozy in their cell blocks twiddling their thumbs.
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Or something.
Where do they come up with these zany ideas? What’ll they come up with next?
Fortunately, we’ve got stalwart pro-prison folks like Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) to put a stop to such shenanigans, despite the best efforts of those intellectual do-gooders who keep trying to confuse us with facts.
One such group, which calls itself the Center on Crime, Communities and Culture, based in New York City, collected a stack of studies from around the country, examined them and came out with a new report.
It concluded that prison-based education programs dramatically reduce recidivism rates. That’s the rate at which ex-offenders offend again and get arrested and jailed again. Nationally, about 60 percent of released convicts are arrested again and about 40 percent are re-incarcerated, according to the federal Bureau of Criminal Justice Statistics.
But, for inmates involved in prison-based education programs, the center found recidivism dropped to 15.5 percent and, in some states, as low as 1 percent.
Overall, inmates with at least two years of college have only a 10 percent re-arrest rate, compared to a national rate of 60 percent.
For juveniles, who have a re-arrest rate of almost 80 percent, the re-arrest rate is reduced by 20 percent or more when they are involved in quality reading instruction programs, according to a congressional study the center cites.
But, that’s probably not going to impress Sen. Helms. He had already heard statistics like that in his own state when he discovered to his shock and dismay a program in which Shaw University in Raleigh sent professors into four state prisons to teach college courses to 233 inmates in 1990.
These prison students took the courses for credit, aided by Pell Grants, through which qualified needy students in North Carolina could receive up to $2,400 a year for college tuition.
Nationally, inmates received grants up to $2,500. These grants represented about one-tenth of 1 percent of all the Pell Grants awarded nationwide.
But once eagle-eyed Jesse got wind of that, he immediately drew up an amendment to an appropriations bill to make inmates ineligible for Pell Grants. The fact that none of the inmates in North Carolina’s programs had been re-incarcerated did not impress him one bit.
On Capitol Hill the bill was stalled for a few years. Some legislators allowed themselves to be impressed by facts. For example, 93 percent of the nation’s prison wardens in a 1993 congressional survey supported such educational and vocational programming in correctional facilities. The wardens somehow got the notion into their heads that non-violent inmates who are motivated enough to go to class at night after working all day should be encouraged.
One wonders where they get such ideas. If enough people started thinking that way, the next thing you know, people might start thinking that prisons have something to do with rehabilitation.
But, Helms, plucky fellow that he is, persevered. He had never seen a Pell Grant he liked, anyway.
In 1992, his was the lone dissenting Senate vote against a $57 billion five-year higher education package that markedly expanded financial aid to college students from lower and middle-income families.
Then in 1994, Helms’ ban on Pell Grants to inmates became part of that year’s crime bill.
His time had come. Congress was frothing at the mouth over high crime rates, high taxes and liberal coddling of criminals with such frills as television sets.
Wow, imagine that: TV sets. What luxury.
Now, thanks to Helms and the get-tough-on-criminals attitude of the times, inmates across the country have more TV time since they won’t be spending that time in classrooms. Since the federal measure passed, at least 25 states have used political and budgetary reasons to cut back on higher education programs for inmates, down from 350 programs in 1990 to only eight today, according to the center’s study.
Way to go, gang. Who says education is important? Obviously, it’s just a frill.
Like televisions.
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But the work of the pro-prison folks is not done. Any day the people who care about facts might just rise up again and try to put inmates back into classrooms.
It happened before, back when more people cared about facts.
Do you?