COLUMN: Prisoners deserve and education

From Nadia Dowshen's, "Urban Guerrilla," Fall '99 From Nadia Dowshen's, "Urban Guerrilla," Fall '99One of the greatest injustices of the American criminal justice system occurred in 1994, when Congress made prisoners ineligible for Pell Grants -- government-funded grants for higher education. This more or less put an end to prison-based higher education. Some states even went so far as to rescind funding for education in prisons beyond the ninth grade level. Over the past 20 years our prison population has quadrupled -- we now have a larger portion of our population locked up than any industrialized nation in the world. Since the early 1980s we have seen an increase in punitive measures in prisons, including more mandatory maximum sentencing and solitary confinement and the removal of exercise equipment. And according to the Justice Policy Institute, we witnessed a 30 percent increase in spending on prisons while spending on higher education fell 18 percent between 1987 and 1995. By the end of this period, more money was earmarked for erecting prisons than for building colleges. In sum, our society believes in punishing criminals, not rehabilitating them. Indeed, a 1995 survey showed that the majority of Americans shared that belief, regardless of ethnicity, class or gender. But if you're going to put people in prison and then let them back out into society, you want them to be ready to re-enter society. After all, the point is to make sure they don't commit crimes again. While there is no evidence that building more prisons, lengthening sentences or putting more people in solitary confinement deters crime, prison-based higher education does dramatically decrease repeat offenses. A study by the Center on Crime, Community and Culture showed a drop of over 15 percent in the rate of repeat offenses for those who received education in prison. And concerns that the money would be better spent on law-abiding students are also misplaced. In terms of cost to society, the federal dollars used to fund education for prisoners accounted for less than 1/10th of 1 percent of Pell grants distributed nation wide. This is a small price to pay for programs that will save tax payers money in the long run when prisoners re-enter society with marketable skills and hope for their futures, decreasing the chances that they'll once again have to be housed at state expense. Many graduates of prison-based higher education become particularly effective in working with at-risk youth to help them stay off the streets and out of trouble. Nothing is quite as convincing as hearing from someone who has been there. But the reluctance to fund prison-based education has real world parallel with the lack of funding for public education in poor communities. Many of our country's prisoners, who are disproportionately poor and from minority backgrounds, came to prison from a background of poor educational opportunities and little hope for success. Without prison-based education, they will never have that opportunity. Incarceration does not deter crime, but education does. It is time to stop punishing people in this country for being poor or from a minority group. And it is time to start investing in education, inside of prison and out, which has been proven to decrease crime rates and to give people an opportunity to be productive members of society.