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.