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The Importance of Education for Inmates
Benefits of education in prisons
The Importance of Education for Inmates
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Inmates who took part in correctional facility education programs have a “43% lower odds of recidivating than inmates who did not” (Peterson et al.). This represents a reduction of 13 percentage points on the risk of recidivism. The average cost for an inmate is $60,000 and taxpayers pay an average of $60 billion a year for prisons. The sad reality is that prisons disproportionately affect minorities, and minorities have less of an advantage as white people. If the states fund prison education and universities within the states also provide support then this will directly affect recidivism. It will also lower the chances of ex-convicts returning to prison and also provide them with an education and or a better chance of getting a job after prison. Ex-convicts are less likely to be employed after their sentence is finished and if they are employed they make less than the average worker. If prisoners are ignored then history will continue to repeat itself and the prisoners will most likely return to prison. This in turn affects where taxes go when it could go towards other things like education for example. At the same time not only is the state protecting the safety of citizens but also reducing the population of prisons.
The issue is that America spends a lot of its expenditure on prison and the country has the highest number of prisoners in the world which makes the U.S. look bad. This paper will investigate the flaws of the prison system and the advantages of incorporating correctional facility education programs. The problem assessed will be the population of jails; the fact that the U.S. spends more money on imprisoning citizens than educating them; and the high percentage of prisoners returning to prison when they are rele...
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...hemselves. The responsibility to make this change goes to the government and judging from the points made in this paper there should be more initiative on prison education. There have been a lot of studies and projects done on this topic and statistically speaking prison education yields positive results. According to Duwe and Clark “Aos, Miller, and Drake (2006) found that basic adult education programs in prison reduced recidivism by more than 5%, and prison-based vocational programs reduced recidivism by more than 12% (based on the results of 3 studies)” (). There are more studies done from different states and they all always state a that recidivism drops when inmates participate in a prison education program. The refuting sides to this topic do not outweigh the benefits of prison education and it is never a bad thing to try and aid a person who is in need of it.
We imprison seven-hundred-fifty prisoners per one hundred-thousand citizens, almost five times the earth average. Around one in every thirty-one grown-ups in the United States is in the penitentiary, in prison or on supervised release. District, state, and national disbursements on corrections expenses total to around seventy billion dollars per year and has raised to forty percent more over the past twenty years. http://www.newsweek.com/ The current corrections specialists have started to support that notion. Even though we comprehend that criminals must take accountability for their actions, we also realize that we can no longer just turn out heads at their disappointments. The individuals that derive out of our penitentiaries, prisons, municipal programs and out from beneath our direction are our creation, and we have to take some responsibility. Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition) Hankoff, Leon D. "Current trends in correctional education: theory and practice." International Journal of Offender Therapy & Comparative Criminology Apr. 1985: 91-93. Criminal Justice Collection. Web. 12 June 2016.
It may come as no surprise to some that a quality education has the power to provide, for those who seek it, the opportunity of personal and professional transformation. It can be said that a society which encourages higher education is more likely to yield a population of individuals who are civic minded and purposeful as opposed to a society which does not. In an article entitled “What Can College Mean? – Lessons from the Bard Prison Institute, author Ellen Condiffe Lagemann supports the importance of a liberal arts education but also presents the case that quality education in the United States is not available to all.
Mass incarceration may not seem like major issue to people, but according to article by Melinda D. Anderson it is causing the life of some children also their families. The growth of incarceration of black people presumably seems to be increasing, particularly more within the US. According to Naacp.org, “African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites” therefore as those people are being incarcerated, it’s causing problems not only for them but also for their families as well. The children of incarcerated people are being criticized in school by their friends. Without having proper guardianship, a student’s academic life tends to fall. The article “How
The past two decades have engendered a very serious and historic shift in the utilization of confinement within the United States. In 1980, there were less than five hundred thousand people confined in the nation’s prisons and jails. Today we have approximately two million and the numbers are still elevating. We are spending over thirty five billion annually on corrections while many other regime accommodations for education, health
A significant number of ex-inmates are unemployed because they do not have adequate education and professional skills in order to find a job. More than two thirds of all inmates have not completed high school. Both unemployment and low education level attainment are inversely correlated to recidivism. The lower an offender’s educational level attained, the more likely he/she is to be unable to find employment that will provide for his/her financial needs. Most of the employment available for ex-inmates is in low wage sectors. Those who are unable to provide for themselves are more likely to reoffend. Academic and vocational training provide offenders with the skills to attain better paying employment. By providing academic and vocational training during incarceration, the likelihood of recidivism drops 3.7x compared to ex-inmates who did not participate in rehabilitation programs.
Studies have shown that in-prison education curriculums decrease recidivism while refining the eminence of life. However, majority of extra-curricular classes in prison have been eradicated, additional customs of job preparation have reduced, and access to exercise equipment and educational resources such as books is progressively limited. In the past five years the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) has increased the federal budget by 40 per cent to $2.6 billion, majority bei...
The basic concept of educating prisoners while they are in prison is logical and simple. It makes sense to make convicts' time in prison productive. This leads to a person that, when he leaves prison, knows a better way of life than committing crimes which would inevitably send him back to prison. While making perfect sense, this solution drastically changes the concept of prison. The effects of social programs integrated with prisons start with helping direct the taxpayers money to more prolific uses, and expand to making people in America smarter, more educated, less dangerous.
It is said that prison should be used for more serious crimes such as rape, assault, homicide and robbery (David, 2006). Because the U.S. Prison is used heavily for punishment and prevention of crime, correctional systems in the U.S. tend to be overcrowded (David, 2006). Even though prisons in the U.S. Are used for privies on of crime it doesn 't work. In a 2002 federal study, 67% of inmates that
Schools inevitably must deal with disciplinary action when it comes to misconduct in students. However, at what point should the courts and law enforcement intervene? “Zero tolerance” policies started as a trend in the school setting during the 1990s in “response to the widespread perception that juvenile violence was increasing and school officials needed to take desperate measures to address the problem” (Aull 2012:182-183). However, national statistics indicated a decrease in juvenile’s share of crime during the influx of zero tolerance policies in schools (National Crime Justice Reference Service 2005).
...r responsibility for routine discipline of students not police officers. They need to improve faculty training to resolve conflicts instead of calling the cops who inevitably has to take action once called. Unfortunately the young men I visited every Sunday were already targeted by the “School-to-Prison-Pipeline initiative. And when they leave the prison, they will be faced with many hardships because of the stigma surrounded by incarceration struggling to find work and successfully live on their own. People don’t want to hire ex-cons, and by not giving them the opportunity to work in a particular area that they may have learned about in prison, they are forced back into old habits. Since old habits most likely include illegal activities, an incarcerated individual may be incarcerated again, and thus return to the Juvenile center or even worse an actual prison.
It is to no surprise that America has a large amount of its people incarcerated for a variety of reasons. One must ask themselves how we can help these individuals get back on track. The answer is America’s most powerful weapon known to man; an education. This is an annotated bibliography for research on the effects of education in the prison system and if these effects are worth taxpayer’s money.
The amount th of money that has been spend on prisons is about 49 billion dollars the reason for this is because people are being sent to prison and some re offend and come back. The main purpose of going to jail is to never come back , but in some cases others don 't seem to learn from their mistakes. This is the reason why prison education would come in handy. In the article “Education and Vocational Training in Prisons Reduces Recidivism, Improves Job Outlook” its states that “Researchers found that inmates who participate in correctional education programs have 43 percent lower odds of returning to prison than those who do not”This quote is pretty much saying that the percentage of inmates that has education is less likely to come back. This is good because the amount of money that we would be saving would probably help us with debt that we face a lot in american. Education is the most important form of rehabilitation for
With the prison system structured as it currently is, incarceration fails to rehabilitate prisoners, effectively forcing those impacted to re-offend. This failure allows for negative impacts within society. While is does also provide some with a positive outcome, the larger scale society suffers while this social issue goes without a
Prison was designed to house and isolate criminals away from the society in order for our society and the people within it to function without the fears of the outlaws. The purpose of prison is to deter and prevent people from committing a crime using the ideas of incarceration by taking away freedom and liberty from those individuals committed of crimes. Prisons in America are run either by the federal, states or even private contractors. There are many challenges and issues that our correctional system is facing today due to the nature of prisons being the place to house various types of criminals. In this paper, I will address and identify three major issues that I believe our correctional system is facing today using my own ideas along with the researches from three reputable outside academic sources.
A controversial issue in the criminal justice field is whether or not educational programs should be offered to inmates in jail while they are incarcerated. While some might argue that taxpayers should not be forced to fund these types of programs, others agree that it is extremely beneficial to not only the inmates but also the taxpayers. Not only are the inmates the people in society who need education the most, but studies have shown a significant decrease in the recidivism rate of inmates who participated in educational programs while incarcerated. Jails and prisons should increase educational programs to inmates because inmates need education more than ever, it is more financially efficient to provide educational programs and it significantly reduces the recidivism rate.