What is the Answer?

At the end of the day, what are we doing to improve the divides that are present between the criminal justice system and education?  This is the question that I keep asking myself after every posting that I have written.  The pessimist in me just wants to pack it all up and throw it in the trash, not looking back for one second.

The real me, however, knows that there is hope.  I truly believe that out of the mess that is being created now, future generations will learn a lot and do things differently.

 

In the prisons themselves, it seems that some university is always willing to try some sort of outreach program to mentor and teach the incarcerated so that they are able to learn and not only help others that may fall into the same predicament, but actively participate in outreach programs to hopefully prevent a younger person from walking down the path that led to ruin.

A program that I stumbled upon my searches had a wonderful mission statement that speaks to the heart of the matter.  The group University Beyond Bars’ Mission Statement reads as such:

     “University Beyond Bars offers post-secondary education to the incarcerated in Washington State’s prisons, particularly prisoners of color, with the twin goals of reducing recidivism by preparing offenders to reenter society as successful, productive members of their communities, and to reduce prison violence by providing meaningful intellectual pursuits and hope to those who are serving time.

      University Beyond Bars advocates for enlightened solutions to society’s problems beyond the wasted human potential, violence and needless expense of having the highest rate of incarceration in the world.” (UBB, 2012)

This mission statement addresses many of the issues that we here have addressed in this blog.  Looking around the website could actually fill a person with hope thinking that there are people so dedicated to those that society would just cast away.

What of the children, might you ask?  A friend recently pointed out this article a few weeks ago, and after a little research, I am proud to say that there is some serious thought going into the kids by a national group called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids.  The heart of this group is about preventing child abuse however their advocacy of children’s issues does not stop there.  In a report titled Pay Now or Pay Much More Later, this group advocates in particular for “high-quality early education” (Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California, 2012).  Not only do they advocate for better quality programs but this group of people which is comprised of people from the criminal justice profession is doing this with data that proves that it has an impact on future rates of incarceration.

It seems that while we may know what works to improve the situation, as was discussed in blog 3, both the public perception of what a prisoner deserves and the legislature's "need" to balance the budget by slashing education spending while spending record amount on incarceration is simply unsustainable.  In my search to find a solution to fund education that would in the long run serve to defund criminal justice funding was just not present.  

I do believe that there is a group or person that is capable of fixing this.  That we as a society are on the verge of great change withing the criminal justice system that will make it possible.  I will keep watching and anxiously await that day. 

Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California. (2012). Pay Now or Pay Much More Later: Law Enforcement Leaders support high-quality early education to cut. San Franciso: Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California.

UBB. (2012, May 17). University Beyond Bars Mission Statement. Retrieved from University Beyond Bars: Freedom Through Education: http://www.universitybeyondbars.org/about-ubb/mission/

(De)Funding Education

In much of the literature I have been reading about schools and education funding, two California initiatives have been mentioned numerous times, Proposition 13 and Proposition 98.  Since we have looked at the important link to education and criminality in relation to our kids, I thought that it would be a good time to look at these two propositions in order to look at why, in California, the amount of money that is spent on education is at an all-time low.

Proposition 13, which passed in 1978, reset property taxes and basically fixed the rates that were charged for property taxes for residential properties as well as commercial properties.  It also had provisions in it about how much property taxes can be raised per year as well.  The part of the law that may have hurt schools the most was the part of the law that transferred the power of allocating property taxes fell in the hands of the state (California Tax Data).  What this meant to education was that local cities could no longer raise taxes in order to boost funding to local schools.  Those municipalities now had to rely on the mercy of the State Legislature to give them the money that they needed.

This allocation seemed to be working out until the point where schools were not getting what they deemed necessary to get along.  At this point, the California Teachers Association sponsored Proposition 98, The Classroom Instructional Improvement and Accountability Act.  (Chapman, 1998)  According to Chapman, Prop 98 had a lot of promise initially to fund the schools by promising a supposed 40% chunk of the annual state budget to K-14 education.  This he refers to at first as the ceiling, and then the floor has truly become problematic in economic circumstances that we are currently facing.  Prop 98 started as a cast for the issues that Prop 13 exacerbated, and has now become the band-aid for a serious problem.

It just seems silly to me though.  We know that our kids need to be educated and that it costs money.  How is it that when a budget is decided that it seems like a great idea to cut funding to the one thing that over time will return the most money on the initial investment.  Not only does this yield a financial benefit, but you then have competent people around to make the world a better place.  

In a report posted in a Bay area newspaper in 2011, the reporter talks about how the prison system in California surpassed the Higher Education system in spending- prisons were at 9.6 billion dollars and the CSU and UC systems topped out at 5.7 billion dollars (Gollan, 2011).  The article talks about this shift and a couple of the reasons being that there has been recent litigation that lead to an increase of funding for prisoner healthcare and facilities, but as I have discussed in postings one and two when the money is spent on books, there is most likely less of a need for more prisons.

 

I guess a logical question to ask now is what do we do with Prop 13 and 98 now that we know what they are or are not doing for our education system?  This question is not simple though.  Undoing these propositions would take more than just repealing them and looking for a different way to fund schooling and pulling in revenue for the state.  At the heart of it, there needs to be a general public feeling that our money, in whatever way it is collected needs to be invested wisely in the future: kids and schools.

California Tax Data. (n.d.). What is Proposition 13? Irvine: self-published.

Chapman, J. I. (1998). Proposition 13: Some. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California.

Gollan, J. L. (2011, September 09). Education vs. Prisons: Shifting Priorities. The Bay Citizen, p. 1.

Prison Myths Debunked

I come across many people in my day to day life who challenge my inquiry into the connection between education and the CJ system. Consistently the issue is raised of why I would think it is important and what a waste it is to think about incorporating education into an incarceration term.  Following are the Top 3 Myths about Incarceration & Education debunked!

INCARCERATION IS A WALK IN THE PARK:  It has been suggested to me that compared to the “harsh realities” of the outside world, prisoners just hang out all day. The idea that incarceration is similar to an extended vacation paid for by the law abiders could not be further from the truth. My eyes were quickly opened to the stories of brutality and the day to day struggles just to survive prison as I strolled through the pages of Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member, and The Black Hand: The Bloody Rise and Redemption of "Boxer" Enriquez, a Mexican Mob Killer.  I was truly unprepared for how rough it can be. It is hard to imagine that anyone could come out a better person than they went in after reading these two first-hand accounts.

EDUCATION IS EASIER IN JAIL:  Wrong again! The prison environment is chaotic at best and very unstable to survive in let alone attempt to succeed academically. Even for a potential student inmate who wants to become educated, prison lockdowns and disturbances continuously interrupt the school curriculum. The environment alone makes any continuity in education seemingly impossible. Students have enough excuses for not going to class or doing homework without the added stress of constant death threats and loyalty negotiations.  Beyond the physical limitations of going to school on the inside, the enormous peer pressure of making the decision to become a better person and “get out of the game” weighs heavy on all who wish to make use of their time served to better themselves.

INMATES HAVE NO RIGHT TO AMMENTITIES: This is the notion that inmates should be able to do nothing more while incarcerated than sit and contemplate what they have done wrong. This means no TV, fitness equipment etc. This is known as the Principle of Least Eligibility which states that “prisoners ought to receive no goods or services in excess of those available to people who have lived within the law. (Clear, 2011)” Although I understand the frustration that we have people on the outside who lack the survival necessities afforded to those who have proven they cannot exist within the constraints of society, the logic behind Least Eligibility does not add up. Without the opportunity to maintain some semblance of normalcy on the inside, how could we possibly expect someone to re-emerge after time served and adapt to life as a potentially rehabilitated individual. If anything, giving the prisoners the tools to become the citizens we expect them to be saves us all time & money in the long run. These people are already incarcerated in a government funded living facility (i.e.jail) it makes sense to build them into self-sufficient individuals prepared to contribute when they are released. 

Incarceration is a double edged sword. Prison is not, nor should be a golfing vacation in the Bahamas, but it should also provide the tools for those incarcerated to succeed on the outside. In a speech by the commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Brian Fischer remarked that we need to improve the lives of all those affected by incarceration (Fischer, 2009).   The best way to accomplish that is through education.

 

Blatchford, C. (2008). The Black Hand: The Bloody Rise and Redemption of "Boxer" Enriquez, a Mexican Mob Killer. Harper.

Clear, T. R. (2011). American Corrections- Ninth Edition. Belmont: Cengage.

Fischer, B. S. (2009). Remark: Keynote Address. Fordham Urban Law Journal.

Shakur, S. (1993). Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member. Penguin Books.

The Economics of Education

This graph shows average annual income potential with different levels of education.  Information courtesy of the U.S. Dept of Education

This data is according to the US Dept. of Health and Human Services 2012 US Poverty guidelines.

    

          Exploring the link between education and the Criminal Justice system brings us today to the impact of a high school diploma on the earning potential of an individual. We have looked already at how education plays a role in the social returns of building a person of greater self-worth who is able to make more positive contributions to society (Lochner, 2007) (Moretti, 2005).  Today, we will crunch the numbers of what it means to have a basic education in terms of CJ.  

                A High school education is a foundational building block to life.  Without that foundation nearly all elements of one’s life will be strained. It will be nearly impossible for a person to get a job or advance in any chosen field without this most basic of degrees. Let’s look at what that means by the numbers:

                Imagine a family of 4 supported mainly by one person who does not have a high school diploma. According to the US Census Study the family survives on the average salary of $15,346.00 annually. To put that into perspective consider that the US Dept. of Health and Human Services considers this family to be impoverished if they earn less than $23,050.00 a year (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2012). Our family of four is living 33% below the poverty line. Keep in mind that these numbers do not account for racial or gender differences. On average the life time earnings difference is 20% based on attaining just a high school diploma. The disparity is more staggering the higher the education level gets. Add to these numbers the fact that 24.5% of high school freshmen do not reach graduation. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, in 2009 the high school freshman graduation rate was 75.5 percent, meaning only 75 percent of incoming freshmen will graduate from high school in “normal” amount of time (Stillwell, 2011). Needless to say that is a huge number of people who cannot even hope to reach the poverty line let alone earn beyond it.  It becomes easy to see how a desperate financial situation with little hope of escape translates directly into desperate measures. 

                     In my own life, I came head on into the education wall. After graduating high school I continued on to attain my AA degree. Much like an 18 year old student fails to see the potential importance of a college education; I did not see much value in continuing on to a four year university. Fast forward through many years and several jobs it became apparent that I had hit a wall which could only be overcome by continuing my advanced education.

                How does this lack of earning potential impact the CJ system? After looking in my first posting at how a person’s social & economic worth tie directly into their interactions with the law it is important to note the impact of education for someone who has already intersected with the system. It has been proven that a continued lack of education hampers the prospect of rehabilitation once out of jail.  In New York State, the Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) created a study that discussed education and its link to recidivism.  The results of this study found that if younger inmates, particularly those under 21 years of age, received a GED while incarcerated, the likelihood of them to end up back in jail was five percent less.  This may seem like a small number, but as the study indicated, these men felt they had more value, in fact enough value to stay out of the criminal justice system.  The GED also gave them the opportunity to get a better job which helped them as well. (Nuttall, Hollmen, & Staley, 2003)

Although education has become an integral piece of the Criminal Justice conversation, this has not always been the case. In the next installment of my blog I will take a look back in time to the history of education with regards to incarceration & rehabilitation.   

               

Works Cited

Cheeseman Day, J. N. (2002). The Big Payoff: Educational Attainmentand Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings. U.S. Census Bureau.

Lochner, L. (2007). Education and Crime. InternationalEncyclopedia of Education, 3rd Edition, 14.

Moretti, E. (2005). Does Education Reduce Participation inCriminal., (p. 17). New York.

Nuttall, J., Hollmen, L., & Staley, E. M. (2003,September 1). The effect of earning a GED on recidivism rates. Journal ofCorrectional Education, 1-9.

Stillwell, R. S. (2011). Public School Graduates and Dropouts From the Common Core of Data: School Year 2008–09 First Look. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2012, January19). Annual Update of the HHS Poverty Guidelines. Washington D.C.