Locked Up, Locked Out

Abstract

IN The Pursuit of Loneliness, sociologist Philip Slater accused Americans of operating too often on what he called toilet assumption. assume that, once something is flushed down the toilet, it's gone--poof--and we don't have to worry about it anymore. get miffed if the sewer backs up. I would guess the prison population in this country could tell you all about the toilet assumption, because inmates receive so little attention. While the crime rate has dropped over a 30-year period, the number of people inhabiting jails has climbed from 744,000 in 1985 to 2,131,080 in 2004. In the same period, the number of people incarcerated per 100,000 citizens has soared from 313 to 736. Few seem to have noticed. That inmate numbers rise as crime rates fall occurs because of longer minimum sentences and mandatory prison sentences, especially in cases involving a strikes law. Prisoners must also serve a longer portion of their sentences before becoming eligible for release for good behavior or because of prison overcrowding. These are among the many depressing facts in Locked Up and Locked Out, an ETS policy information report by Richard Coley and Paul Barton. It has long been known that people in prisons are less educated than the public at large. In the National Adult Literacy Survey, only 6% of inmates scored at level 4, and none scored at level 5, the highest level. The numbers for the total population were 17% and 3%, respectively. As of 1997, 38% of whites, 31% of blacks, and 23% of Hispanics in prison had at least a high school diploma. Prison-based education programs can help. Most research into the impact of education on recidivism finds positive effects, whether the program provides basic secondary education, vocational education, or college education. Yet the prison education enterprise has been declining since the 1970s--we think. We think because so little attention has been paid and so few data collected in routine, systematic ways that it's impossible to say for sure. Not that prison education was ever a massive effort. A 1994 survey found that the amount of money in prison education budgets varied from more than $6,000 per inmate in New Jersey to virtually nothing in Wisconsin. Most states looked more like Wisconsin than like New Jersey. From 1990 to 2000, the proportion of the total prison staff providing education fell from 4.1% to 3.2%, raising the number of inmates per instructor from 66 to 95. Most prisoners eventually return to their communities, but many of them do so with what Coley and Barton term their own three strikes: 1) low literacy levels, which employers wish to avoid; 2) breaks in their employment history, which employers like to avoid; and 3) a general reluctance on the part of employers to hire former prisoners. The low educational level of prisoners is a problem because a sizable body of literature has indicated that it is getting more and more difficult for high school dropouts to obtain jobs that pay a living wage. The 2006 edition of Education at a Glance from the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that dropouts in the U.S. make only 65% of what people with diplomas earn. That's the biggest earnings discrepancy in the developed world. Almost 90% of all jails have some kind of education program, and 80% report having a secondary program. However, there are virtually no data on how long the courses last, what the inmate participation rate is, or whether the programs have any lasting effect besides the reduction in recidivism mentioned above. Not that recidivism is a minor issue. One longitudinal study in Maryland, Minnesota, and Ohio found that participation in prison education programs reduced recidivism by about 29% overall, recidivism being defined as re-arrest, re-conviction, or re-incarceration. Coley and Barton raise a question seldom asked and even less frequently answered: What about the children? …