Thank you for a thoughtful contribution. I heartily agree with the concept. Calvin College, a small private liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is offering a bachelor's degree program at the Ionia Prison. See https://calvin.edu/prison-initiative/. It's been a win-win endeavor. Excellent, eager students and a great opportunity for teaching faculty.
16
Thinking back to the incredible effort, discipline and focus it took me to get into and then through university, I find the entire thesis of this article to be frankly insulting. I’ve known numerous losers who did end up in prison. All I can say is that I would never want to get anywhere near any one of them again. What an incredibly pathetically stupid idea.
21
You did not mention the Bard College Prison Initiative which has been a leader in prison education.
8
"Imagine if prisoners sat in classrooms learning about climate science or poetry"
Wow. Liberal utopia knows no bounds. How about teaching them a skill that will actually lead to a job once they are released?
28
I taught in the SQ college program for a number of years and feel qualified to make a few comments.
This is a volunteer run program which only goes to an AA degree; it earned that award from Obama. The state's contribution is primarily providing space and guards.
To those of you who object to inmates getting a free education which people on the outside pay far too much for, you're partly right. Yea, higher education in this country should be free. Absolutely. And yes, we should be providing pre-school care and decent K-12 schools everywhere. Of course, we'd have to tax the 1% to do this. Interestingly, right now residents of San Francisco can also get that tuition free education but very few people would chose to spend time in prison in order to get it. It really is an unpleasant place to spend time; as much as my students appreciated what they were getting out of the program, they'd have preferred to be out of prison.
From an economic perspective, it's cheaper to educate inmates who have the interest - and to be clear, not all do - than to have them return and spend more time living miserably on our tax dollars.
Having said all that, and as a believer in the idea, the data's a bit sketchy. If you read the article carefully, there's a lack of controlled studies (it'd be hard to do). The question is still partly open as to how much it's the students who opt for an education who wouldn't be back anyway.
16
...and trade schools. And seminaries. And provide universal post-secondary education to all. #yeswestillcan
5
First extend more tuition assistance and loan forgiveness to college students who are not in prison. Then let’s talk.
21
"If we believe that education is a civil right..."
Really? Education is a civil right, but voting isn't? How many of your states take away the fundamental right to exercise your democratic vote because someone has a criminal record? You hold their criminal record against them for the rest of their lives, regardless of their rehabilitation. Lifelong punishment is the American way.
And how many of America's prisons use their inmates as slave labor? The estimates run literally into the hundreds of millions on how much money American businesses make by turning your prison population into a new slave race. Buying American? Was your product made by a prisoner who earned nothing, and had no choice?
Interesting how nobody seems to want to change the 13th amendment to remove that clause allowing prisoners to be used as slave labor. Seems that the overwhelming population of your prisons - black men - are just as much slaves as their great great grandparents were, just with different clothes, and physical bars to keep them contained. Guess the white nationalists won the civil war after all...
And you have the gaul to wax lyrical about turning prisons into 'colleges' to provide inmates with 'opportunities' - opportunities you should have afforded them before they got there, not after.
*sigh* Americans. One thing Trump can claim that Americans do better than anybody else - hypocrisy. "We are the greatest hypocrites the world has ever seen, believe me".
14
Great ambitious idea. I have an even better one albeit somewhat naive and unattainable: why don’t we try to turn colleges into colleges? Ditto with primary and secondary education.
13
We must forgive the prisoners for the deeds committed and offer them opportunities to enter into society as meaningful and contributing members. As a college professor, the inclusion of prisoners into the college arena is beneficial to both the prisoner, the student, and the professor.
We must embrace and encourage diversity. Imagine if we were all alike-how boring!
7
My mother was the prison librarian in a school located within a maximum security prison in Texas. My mother, a former 8th grade earth science teacher, made it her mission to get the "boys" as she called them because most of them were under 30, interested in astronomy, oceanography, and geology. By the time she retired, her "boys" were requesting National Geographic and Cosmos magazine instead of their previous go-to periodical, Guns & Ammo. Several of them teared up upon learning of her retirement.
Imagine if she had gotten to these boys in the 8th grade? I can't help but think that solid public education from professionally trained teachers who are appropriately paid and respected would help our mass incarceration so much.
22
Colleges? How about tech schools? You know what I had to pay a plumber to replace my sink faucet?!
11
Here in Huntsville, Texas, (so-called execution capital of the U.S. and headquarters of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice), Lee College of Baytown, Texas, has been offering college-level credit courses since way back in 1966, more than half a century ago!
Lee currently offers classes at eight Texas prisons, with a current enrollment of more than 1,000 offenders. (Check the Lee College website for more details.)
My wife and I participate weekly at Huntsville's Wynne prison unit in a faith-based program known as Bridges to Life. The BTL recidivism rate for BTL graduates is around 13.8%.
Belinda and I have learned that many offenders really aren't bad people. Instead, they've just made poor choices, often driven by drugs, alcohol, and the environment in which they were raised.
So here in this toughest of all states when dealing with criminals, Texans
discovered 52 years ago that education and character guidance can help rebuild the lives of men and women who've lost their way.
11
I'm a big supporter of college education in prison, but I suspect the greater majority of inmates need their GED first. Many of them need help with basic skills like reading, writing, and arithmetic. And teaching vocational skills would be the best option for many inmates to find work after their release. Offering college courses in prison is indeed laudable, but just imagine the rise in self-esteem that would surely result for an inmate who doesn't feel stupid anymore. We need to offer the help that is needed the most.
12
Not every person, prisoner or not, should go to college, but every person should learn a trade and have a high school diploma. To that extent, I agree with Ms. Hinton.
Meanwhile, if we want prisoners to be released better able to negotiate the world than when they entered prison, they need not only education but decent health care. Many prison populations today are full of people who suffer from mental illness that led to incarceration rather than treatment. This includes addicts as well.
8
The education needs to start BEFORE prison. From preschool to post secondary, young people need to be educated well enough to become productive citizens. This happens very well in some places, and terribly in others.
I'm fine with post secondary education offered in prisons, but let's not forgot the struggling young people who keep their collective noses clean. They deserve a chance as well.
4
Depriving people of their freedom as a consequence of committing a crime is necessary, in most cases, for public safety reasons and to act as a deterrent to others. On the other hand, depriving prisoners of their ability to educate themselves is cruel and unusual punishment.
6
For some prisoners, Hinton's idea would be fine. For example, if one stole for money, and really needed money, and did not commit crimes of personal injury or hit or assail or in any way attack human flesh, then I say by all means: Educate him.
However, if one kills or wounds another, one has done something bad (Spare me the "philosophical" drivel about the virtues of being non-judgmental and other such psychobabble).
If one has done something truly bad, one deserves to suffer. Improving that person's life would not be consistent with ensuring his well-deserved misery.
7
We actually had this in NY State it was discontinued about twenty years ago because it was seen as coddling criminals etc.
4
Good ideas keep returning to knock on the door again. This is precisely what Flower Children wanted to do at the Dawning of the Age of Aquarious. The first inmates I met were in class with me at CSULA, 1967-1973. It was going to change lives, but then Ronald Reagan was elected Governor and the right wing began to ascend in power. Taxes were cut, public colleges became more expensive, mental hospitals were shut down and street people were invented. Now these old New Deal liberal ideas my grandparents supported are called left-wing.
5
"Imagine if...incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry — just like college students." Why then they'd be just as broke and clueless about the real world as the students! Brilliant idea!
10
I read the article and several of the comments. First to those who have been victims of violent crime. I would ask you to remember that the felons who hurt you and your loved ones so badly will more than likely be released from prison someday. Would you rather have them released completely unprepared to return to society or with some foundation to make a meaningful contribution? Which way do you think further reduces the chances that the released prisoner will commit another horrible crime and hurt someone else?
Second, there is a tendency among those who have seen a lot of their friends and neighbors go to prison to regard prison as a rite of passage, a way of growing up. It is possible that some people may see prison as an attractive alternative if free education is available.
Third, the suggestion of trade courses as an alternative to poetry and climate science is valid but should not be taken as a generalization to cover all inmates. Perhaps having the prospective students take some sort of an aptitude test to determine which type of occupation for which they are best suited to determine which courses they are eligible for would be appropriate. Continued progress such as maintaining a certain GPA might allow them to branch out into other areas if they so desire.
Clearly it is a complex problem. On balance, some sort of action is better than the current situation.
4
I have often wondered why we don't turn our prisons into institutions for learning. In most cases, education is an effective and positive change agent. There are thousands of testimonials to that effect. It would cut the rate of recidivism drastically. However, our politicians won't do it because it makes too much sense.
4
I think offering continuing education style classes in prisons would greatly enhance the effectiveness of rehabilitation. I’ve even wondered about volunteering for something along these lines. We cannot offer college credit, though, unless education were free for everyone already, though. That wouldn’t be fair.
I’m more concerned about the rise of for-profit prisons. There’s something not right about that. Recidivism is revenue generating. That’s wrong. Should be government-run only.
I’m even more concerned about the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate in world. We are not a free country. Period.
9
It might be possible to create greater political support for this sort of program if it were one aspect of a much larger agenda to expand high-quality, 4-year college to everyone, just as high school was once expanded to everyone. That would have to include improving the quality of k-12 education, to prepare students better for college. Private schools have taught for decades in ways that could relatively inexpensively (with thoughtful teachers) improve the quality of public education. Giving public school students small class sizes, academic advisors, classtime dynamics based on 'spark of mind to mind' interaction where the emphasis is on students and the teacher all being engaged in and focused on the classroom discussion rather than leaning heavily on technology - it is possible. The cost of failing to educate a large portion of the public, like the loss from degrading, dehumanizing, and humiliating people, is too high.
And to think that the GOP, at the behest of their malevolent overlord, the NRA, proposes to turn our public schools into fortress-like "prisons", complete with metal detectors, armed faculty, and bulletproof windows.
4
This is the kind of thinking that needs to be more commonplace. We need to drown out the nonsense of the punitive, little people, who have risen up on the reactionary right.
America needs to think big again, and start with reconstructing our prison system. I want my fellow citizens to come out after serving their time ready to contribute. This , and abolishing cruel and unusual punishment like solitary confinement are huge steps forward.
2
LOLOLOL I still owe over 50k for graduate school, down from 95k, and now all of my loans have defaulted because I can’t afford them right now and you want me to pay for someone else’s education when I can’t even pay off my own ROTFL get a life!
18
So instead, you'd prefer to pay $40k a year to incarcerate the same persons over and over because they don't deserve a program that could give them a shot at escaping the prison system forever and thus reducing incarceration costs to taxpayers. It's the same sort of argument opponents of a single payer healthcare system use. They'd rather pay the astronomical but less explicit costs (i.e. higher taxpayer, hospital and health insurance costs) of treating uninsured sick people in emergency rooms than cover these "undeserving" people with more explicit but much lower cost programs like Medicaid.
1
You are paying for their incarceration and for their repeated stays in prison. It would probably be cheaper to pay for their education or acquiring a skill which keeps them out of prison.
1
Let’s hear it for any spending that can improve the social fabric of our society!
5
How naive. The premise being that higher education gives one a straighter moral compass and a higher desirability for employment. There are legions of highly education people sitting in prison cells throughout the United States and wandering around it's streets wondering where their next meal is going to come from. Civic engagement, global economy mean absolutely nothing to the person who cannot participate in it. Teach them a skill they can immediately participate in, like carpentry, welding or plumbing, when they get out. Teach them how to interview for a job, handle money and pay bills. You know, the stuff that regular working people have to do.
19
How to pay for college 2030:
“Well son, you’re 18 now its time for you to go rob a bank. You either get away with it and can use the money to pay for 100,000$ a year tuition; or you go to prison and have college paid for that way.”
/s
23
Catchy click-bait title, but many prisoners don't make it through high school.
In the Tyro program in Masury, Ohio, inmates get counseling on self- and family responsibility from the Ridge Project; at least one of its founders was a prisoner himself. P.I. & I. Motor Express then helps them earn a CDL and provides a full-time trucking job on release. This cuts out the wall of corporate HR sniffing for any reason to delete another resume, and a prisoner is released with the motivation and means to succeed in society.
Agree that the trades are woefully undervalued in this country.
4
In 1987, my brother was murdered. I was 11. The man who shot him then got help from his son and another man as they tried to burn his body. When that didn't work, they buried him in a shallow grave.
Months later, the daughter of the family - crushed with guilt and fear - turned them in. They were arrested and put in jail. Every now and then I read the autopsy report, replete with nauseating details of what rotting flesh smells like and how many maggots were in my brother's bullet-riddled body.
When that man murdered my brother, he might as well have killed my whole family. 30 years later, I am the only one left alive from my nuclear family. My father, who brought a gun to the courtroom and tried to exact revenge, died from depression within six years; my other brother became an alcoholic and then a drug addict. He lived homeless for almost a decade and then died from a drug overdose; my mother never recovered and - like my father - lived a depressed existence which spawned into cancer. She died in 2010, looking forward to it.
I still pay a student loan for my PhD. And you want tax-payers like me to pay for this murderer's and his accomplices' educations? Please, get out of your ivory tower every now and then and talk to people who aren't like you instead of just preaching about it.
37
This should be a NYT pick, but of course, it won't be. I am so sorry for your family and your incalculable loss.
13
Thank you, my youngest son is named after my brother and I am grateful for my blessed life on a daily basis. I'm not against prison education systems, but violent offenders and other offenders are in different categories. You would think that a Harvard professor could delineate between the two groups and perhaps propose a scaffolded program, but not in this poorly thought out piece.
7
Why do you only post the comments that agree with this idea??
8
Look around.
Education for prisoners, education for the poor, education for the middle class. This is a great idea. There is so much fear that giving to one means less for another. It keeps us all locked in to a place of bickering fragmentation that only benefits the powers that be.
5
Why don't you talk to any of the law abiding working class people whose wages or even SS benefits are being garnished to pay for college? Ask them how they feel about free education for people who murdered, raped, or maimed law abiding citizens.
17
I think this is an excellent idea that would work, would improve our society, and would ultimately save a ton of money and heartache.
However, it would take a massive cultural shift away from our current system of retributive justice and toward a system of restorative justice. That will be an enormous uphill battle.
Like so many issues (guns, the drug war and on and on) our society seems incapable of prison reform that will actually work.
2
I don't have time to read the comments now — I will later because I love the ideas.
I think poetry is not a productive prison subject. I would think trades are better. Car repair, computer data entry, agriculture. The skills to live a living wage. Each prisoner is unique. I recommend most work with hands and produce things. Growing things. Bricklaying. tile installation. drywall. electrical, plumbing, cleaning and painting.......
Climate science studies may be good for the very few intellectuals but maybe solar panel installation training classes make more sense for most.
People do the best working with their hands and producing goods for the community they live in. Adding value. Having purpose. Most of these folks won't be well adjusted working in a tiny fluorescent-lit cubicle rather than out doing handy work. Poetry is a hobby. Extra-curricula.
5
Turn prisons into factories. Otherwise, one might argue that colleges have been turned into prisons--ideological ones. The writer is effectively recommending a merger.
1
What a noble- and jejune- notion. The nation's prison problem is not sui generis, so there is a galaxy of problems these men and women present. At the same time our nation's "civilians: are have scant room in their hearts for forgiveness these days. And last, haven't our educational standards and markers been devalued enough?
I don't doubt that this idea has merit, but let's not forget the victims of crime.
I suspect many of the commentators here have never been victims of crime as I have.
The last thing I want is to pay for the education of the man that brutally assaulted my wife in her own front yard, putting her in the hospital for three days.
Prisons after all are there for a reason.
15
Sorry. When someone breaks the law, they should first serve their punishment for the crime. Having prisoners receive college credit for learning the wonders of poetics...all on the taxpayers' dime... is simply an injustice that's added to the original injustice of the crime the criminal committed.
There are already anecdotal examples of crimes being committed by people who don't have health insurance and suddenly receiving "complimentary" healthcare on the taxpayers' dime. This "College for Prisoners" would only encourage people without college degrees to go out and commit crimes just to get a free education. Forget it.
12
I could see specific vocational training for specific service sector jobs that are in demand being useful to them. If that type of training constitutes their “college” classes, that would be useful to society.
2
Before one can discuss climate change or poetry, it would help to be scientifically and verbally literate. I strongly suspect that the average prison inmate does not possess these skills. No sense trying to make the proverbial silk purse...
Realistically, how does one train a mostly dysfunctional human being? These people, many through no fault of their own, are utterly incapable of dealing with abstract concepts or even dealing with the social structure. They have bad attitudes, no education, and no real skills. You would almost have to start at kindergarten and work up from there.
I'm sympathetic to their plight, but I think it's largely a hopeless case. The problems that afflict the typical convict should have been addressed when they were children. Perhaps that might have kept them out of prison. Who knows? We ignore festering inequality of opportunity until it's too late, then wonder how all this happens.
6
Great idea......And education has to start earlier, and include emotional regulation skills. Many prisoners lack basic coping skills and that is how they got into trouble in the first place. Without emotional regulation, no learning can take place, and prisoners will continue to be at the mercy of their emotions.
1
When prisons are for-profit enterprises, recidivism is where the money is at.
2
I have always thought that the same goes for mental health. We need to build a new type of vision and hospital/housing/education/counseling "campuses" for the mentally ill in the this country. With the disbanding of the old style "mental hospitals, many of our fellow Americans with mental illness are either out on the streets or in fact, in prison. In neither place to they get the proper help they need to get their conditions under control or help assimilate back into society with assistance and support. They need to be provided with skills if they don't have any, and outlet to do something purposeful in their lives, and the hope of something to live for. Some may need to be in a controlled environment forever, but many, with the RIGHT type of support, could lead successful lives.
I'm linking this with yesterday's news about the Zuckerberg-Chan foundation's $30M grant to improve literacy at the elementary school level. Research shows that "a student who fails to read in the first grade has a 90 percent probability of reading poorly in fourth grade and a 75 percent probability of reading poorly in high school." I'm guessing that a lot of inmates may have fallen behind early in their education careers.
It's inspiring that college courses could be an option for inmates, but I hope that support for literacy doesn't take a back seat to the more exciting idea of College in Prison.
Hey, why not? Most high schools look like they were built to resemble prisons. Maybe U.S. culture will meet in the middle.
3
The first class ought to be ACEs science (see this Sunday evening's 60 Minutes segment by Oprah).
ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, are the commonplace traumas that can overwhelm the system of a developing child. The more of them you have, the higher the likelihood of mental and physical illness, violence, and impulsivity in the future.
Prisoners often have the highest ACE scores of all. It is unsurprising that those traumatized as children can have maladaptive habits as adults.
All of us need to understand ACE science to protect the next generation of kids.
4
First they would need to be turned into High Schools. This is an interesting concept perhaps some progressive state would make a controlled study of its effectiveness.
1
I am an instructor in one of the prison education programs mentioned in the article. The many commenters writing that "law-abiding" or "middle-class" citizens should get free college education before inmates should keep in mind that at least some of these programs (including mine) are volunteer based. This is not a case of funding going to inmate education rather than education for others - it's an example of university professors choosing how to spend their free time. My prison students are articulate, curious, and cooperative. Working with them is a very rewarding way to spend my spare hours.
16
I love your opinion, and I am happy to see there are caring people like you in the world. May you continue to do your good work and be a positive influence on others so they too might join you in educating and helping others.
4
Why not volunteer at your local high school and help those kids who simply need remediation or guidance? Why not offer a couple Ivy League courses to high school students who are not making terrible and destructive decisions that tear apart the lives of innocent people? We have far too many deserving hard working students who will never get to any college for two treatable reasons: they are under prepared and it costs too much. Teaching prisoners makes the teacher feel very good about herself, teaching high school students does not have nearly as much glory.
2
Why not serve underrepresented white Appalachian "deplorables" so despised by subaltern favoring academic elites?
5
Funding education whether inside or outside prison should not be an either/or decision. Congress is choosing to shift funding to military industries and reduce funding to public education.
6
I will support this wholeheartedly if my student loans are completely forgiven. Or at the very least made interest free.
10
The only possible purpose for education in prisons is purely utilitarian, that is, to rehabilitate, to re-educate, the criminals, so they become less of a threat to society, to each other and to themselves. This worthwhile goal would not need to be accomplished by the intellectual conceit of having prisoners study "climate science or poetry". All work and study are edifying, including car repair and painting houses.
Having said that, nobody has any "moral responsibility to pursue educational justice for prisoners". That's liberal nonsense. There is no valid concept of "educational justice for prisoners". If there be any justice, it is for the criminals' victims.
In all of this, the other value of prison must not be forgotten: retribution, and punishment for crimes committed.
8
I'm strongly in favor of educational programs in prison, but they need to be realistic. It's hard enough to get a job with a liberal arts degree when you don't have a criminal record; invest first in making sure prisoner's have skills that will get them decent jobs. Not just technical skills either: prisoners should learn soft skills as well. Things like forward and backward planning, effective communication, interviewing, time management, prioritizing and dealing with setbacks are critical for success in any job. In fact, these skills should really be emphasized in high school as well.
At the same time, we need to be reforming our education system so that kids graduate from high school fully prepared for college or for a trade. Most kids don't grow up wanting to be criminals; let's invest in education that's going to keep them out of prison in the first place.
8
Dear Dr. Hinton,
You look young and full of good intentions.
If you haven't already, spend some time teaching in prison.
Then let's talk.
Another commenter, B. from Brooklyn said it well:
"Instead of languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry."
I would love that to happen, but I wonder where you live.
Where I live, many of the guys hanging out and dealing drugs have almost no language skills. Their conversations are barely intelligible. Their mothers didn't speak with them, sing to them, prepare them for school. Never mind their fathers. When they went to school, they were already behind. When they reached tenth grade, they could not write a complete sentence -- as my cousin, who worked in the Bronx as an audiologist-remedial reading teacher, can tell you.
When these men end up in jail, it's fifth grade, not college, courses they need.
21
Prison Reform, Prison Reform, Prison Reform
and of course education.
1
Climate science and poetry? How about an actual marketable skill and the ability to budget and balance a checkbook?
13
As expected, there are the "what about those who can't get an education but follow the law?" tropes being trotted out. Get everyone a real education, from the ground up, and we put a massive dent in the prison-industrial complex. Fund schools instead of prison. Put people over profit and we might have a chance at liberty and justice for all, no matter how corny that sounds.
2
I'm all for it, along with clearing my $150,000 of college debt.
11
As Wm. F. Buckley once said " I'd rather be governed by people selected randomly from the Boston phone directory than by anyone from the faculty at Harvard U."
11
He did say that, and it has precisely nothing to do with the article.
1
Ahhh, those ivory tower academics. I never met one who lived in the real world.
Even Education Secretary Betsy DeVos calls providing prisoners with the chance to earn a degree “a very good and interesting possibility.”
What DeVos knows about education can be put on the head of a pin.
3
For what it costs to keep someone in prison, send them all to a college and save taxpayer money
2
Why can't non-criminals go to college for free?
9
Why educate murderers and rapists? we should be figuring out how to make their time in prison worse not happy fun times
10
It is well past time to end treating prisoners as something less or unworthy. Prisoners deserve full citizen status and rehabilitation to contributing members of society.
1
So you think people who murder or rape innocent citizens are not less worthy than their victims???
16
The piece should be about expanding and funding already created partnerships. I work at Pitzer College in California. My institution works with a local correctional institutions to create courses that are hybrid courses with undergraduates.
In addition, my institution is part of the Prison Education Project that works with local correctional institutions to bring college professors to local prisons for one day talks to entire college courses. I had a chance to teach at the prison for just one day. I met people who were actively engaged with the material and asked great questions. The writer needs to look further than the elite east coast institutions to find examples. At least twenty West Coast institutions are involved in this endeavor.
2
Unfortunately, the U.S. does not believe in a real education for anyone. (Please see watered down standards in schools including "prestige" universities and colleges.) There is no money to be made in educating people and certainly no money to be made in reducing recidivism. The U.S. is all about making money and not caring for its citizens.
3
Preparation for college doesn't begin at 25; it starts in grade school. Most of these people in prison have educational and emotional deficiencies that couldn't be remedied with a regular college curriculum. These people need to be taught real-world skills that lead to employment. I could see one of these for-profit colleges getting involved in this and making tons of money off the government with absolutely no results.
6
In one study, many of the prisoners were retarded. Many are there for minor drug crimes (aka self-therapy). Or how many homeless (many mentally ill since we emptied out the psych hospitals) trade freedom for a warm bed and food?
Since colleges do not prepare people for jobs (what job counseling did you get before selecting your major?), the better dialogue might be about Vo-Tech or Vocational Rehabilitation programs.
7
I struggled through four years of high school to maintain my GPA, spent a fortune on test prep classes to get a decent SAT score, got in to a good college and now I'm 70K in debt. You're telling me I should have just knocked over a liquor store?
20
You still can. Go for it and post the outcome.
2
Good idea, maybe.
I recently read an article about a financial planner in Washington, DC, who taught a course in basic financial literacy to prisoners. They were very grateful, but not only that they told her that if they had known what she taught, they would have avoided crime in the first place.
Most crime is a response to economic conditions. People who don't have, and don't know how to get, turn to crime as a means of acquiring money. In Central America, as other places, the worst time of the year for street crime and robberies along the roadways is approaching Christmas. Why? Because the robbers want to provide presents for their children and other family members.
In families who have enough money (and more) to live, understanding basic economic matters is passed down from one generation to the next. In families with criminal histories, the same: how to engage in crime.
To my knowledge, nowhere is financial literacy taught in public schools. If you don't learn it at home and it isn't available in school, where can you pick it up?
The first course to teach prisoners is how to live a life outside of criminality. How do you go about it? How do you open a bank account? How can you navigate employment with a criminal record? Then, move on to higher courses and, especially, courses with useful information about how to direct and control your own life.
4
I spent some photographing the last few operational months of an ancient maximum-security prison in Canada. The high school diploma program, taught by some wonderful retired schoolteachers, was one of the few rays of light in a very dark place. The truth is that most people really don’t care what happens to inmates- they just want to throw away the key. And given the astronomical levels of student debt in the US, I can see why many don’t want to give inmates a free post-secondary education. But any rehabilitation program is good, except perhaps for those that attempt to give inmates a better self image. As a prison psychologist explained to me, «all you get is a more self confident criminal.
1
prisons do need access to trade school type training and to community college type training. You can pay now for training or pay later in recidivism and ongoing crimes. I do understand the frustration with people of law abiding students who have to pay for community college. I'd say to them, that yes if would be nice if community college was cheaper, but it still is a terrific deal and they are eligible for scholarships. there is a lot of free money out there for these community colleges. they also will be at the top of every hiring list whereas the felons will always have the last shot at the job.
This approach works in Europe, because college is free, or low cost, for all and middle-class, law-abiding citizens don't have to go into hock for decades to get a degree in poetry or environmental studies, which lead to low-paying jobs. It is fundamentally immoral for a society to provide a free quality education to criminals and refuse to do so for average middle class students. Give reasonable college access to middle and lower class, law-abiding students, before giving free degrees to felons. Yes, the courses will benefit the felons, but they shouldn't have first dibs on this benefit.
7
Idle hands are a devils workshop, right? So keep the criminals busy making license plates and weaving baskets but they haven't earned the right for undergrad or grad studies. Hard working Americans operating within the law have more right to free education.
8
Marymount Manhattan College runs a highly successful college program at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison for women. The women who manage to earn their degrees during their incarceration, no easy feat, not only have better relationships with their children,who take pride in their mothers accomplishments, but upon release get decent jobs and become better parents as well as productive members of society. Marymount should also be mentioned here.
2
Wow, those elitist Harvard blind spots are on full display here. There are many less elite colleges that have offered college classes in prisons for decades that do not appear on these young profs lists.
4
I would so rather have my tax money go to this than to the endless war machine that is lethal to everyone but the devils getting rich off of it.
2
This is not new. This has been happening for at least 30 years. However, what's new is seeing a new population from which to draw money to "not for profit" universities, after having effectively outlawed their competition in for-profit universities.
Omitted from this generally thoughtful and persuasive op-ed is the significant contribution of Boston University to prison education programs. BU's degree program at MCI-Norfolk was and is a national model. Whereas other college-sponsored prison education programs have come and gone with the changing tastes of their academic patrons and the changing times, BU's has been ongoing for many decades. It is worthy of mention. Also not referred to is the devolution of MCI-Norfolk where, due to a get-tough-on-crime wave in the 1930s, the prisoners were ordered to literally wall themselves in to Norfolk's current grim, Shawshank Redemption-like prison. It is a cautionary tale for our times.
I've worked part-time as an adjunct in prison college ed programs at 3 different max security prisons on both coasts. I have had many great students & generally support such programs, but I also like facts & context, and some key ones are missing from the article & comments.
Yes, academics & reformers are fond of quoting statistics like: those who take college courses have recidivism rates about 40% lower than those who don't.
To translate: on average, about 75% of felons released from state prisons return within 5 years. When you reduce that by 40%, that means roughly 45% that took college classes still return. Progress certainly, but there's always more to the story.
In a typical prison, those that actually want to take college classes and have at least a GED make up about 10-20% of the total prison population.
So yes, among those internally motivated to participate and hopefully get a 2 or even 4 year degree, recidivism is lowered by ~ 40% mentioned, and chances for a decent life outside rise significantly.
But one point seldom emphasized is that people change only when they want to, it doesn't matter what you or I want for them, or what programs you offer. They change themselves or they don't, and in my experience on the order of 80% don't want to change.
Lastly, it costs about $100k for 4 years of tuition, books, room & board at a state university. If your law abiding child has to pay her way, why not a repayment plan for inmates. Or perhaps free tuition for all.
12
Until tuition is free for non-criminals, the public won't support free tuition in prison, even for the small subset as you helpfully detail. Your suggestion of a repayment plan sounds reasonable and rarely are there informed comments in these threads. The op ed itself seemed to fall into too much idealism about the population discussed, including using words like "boon" for prisoners which isn't very politically astute language.
6
Also, turn Harvard into prison.
7
Good call.
... What about financing ? Will the tawpayer still pay for his own college tuition ? ????
7
So, law abiding but laid off workers over 50 get NO help at all with retraining or education, but thugs who have murdered, robbed, raped get free college, and room and board, while they could have accessed those things by joining the military, an option not available to anyone over 55. Nice....
19
Felons learning climate science??
3
Bone to pick here. The article has this sentence:
Even Education Secretary Betsy DeVos calls providing prisoners with the chance to earn a degree “a very good and interesting possibility.”
The word 'Even' in this sentence reeks of condescension. OK, you don't like Ms. DeVos, but this article has its focus elsewhere.
7
" For by limiting any 'success' for ex-cons, it is more likely they'll end right back in prison. And just think how nice that is for our revolting for-profit prison system."
the above remark is typical of the left wing readership.
here are the numbers:Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice show that, as of 2013, there were 133,000 state and federal prisoners housed in privately owned prisons in the U.S., constituting 8.4% of the overall U.S. prison population.
this means 91.6% are in government run prisons. they are overseen by overpaid civil servants. most of these prisons are hell holes not withstanding not being for profit centers. they exist to provide lucrative jobs in rural areas to people who barely have better character than the people they oversee.
4
Climate science or poetry??? How about teach them something that has value, a marketable skill like welding (as an example)? Why do liberals think everyone should get an increasingly useless college degree? And if we're going to be honest most of these guys in prison aren't college material but are probably capable of handling a skilled labor job. What the hell is an ex-con going to do with a degree in poetry?
22
they may, through poetry and the liberal arts, see themselves, their fellow men and women, and their society in a different way: one in which they can claim a stake and make a difference. We can't simply train people to do a task. We also have to let them train their imaginations to see a different and better life for themselves than the one that got them into prison in the first place. Everyone's imagination can be trained and sharpened, college material or not.
2
“Pod Save the People” podcast of 1/9/18 was on a Goucher college program providing prison college education. Interviews with graduates are truly moving and inspiring. Director Amy Roza, was asked about providing inmates access when regular costs are so high, she rightly pointed out that there is a general crisis in access to higher education with this as one part of a solution. She also mentioned that the prison guards were frustrated because their kids couldn’t go to college. Yeah. I imagine they are frustrated. Not hard to imagine the frame for that frustration. >> Turn to the “Majority 54” podcast (1/12/18) telling of a young woman who “did everything right” and still got trapped. She had straight-As in high school and got a full scholarship to Howard, in health administration. She was derailed by a higher level calculus class, lost a grade by one point, knocking down her GPA so she lost her scholarship. She finished school by taking loans but was unable to find a job in her field. Her loan payments pursued her relentlessly as she worked in retail. A snowstorm hit. She couldn’t work, so she had to default. Bang. Her credit is shot and her wages are being garnished. This is nuts. >> Let’s not abandon inner-city kids to the prison-industrial complex, and let’s stop turning talented, young people into revenue streams for the lending industry. We all benefit when people achieve their potential, if their talents and abilities aren’t wasted. We can do better.
7
Great idea, but an even better one is to turn poor children (potential criminals) into junior scholars by teaching them in government-funded nursery schools starting at age two. Much more bang for the buck.
11
Some academics for some prisoners.
Have you seen some of these miscreants in TV inside looks? Beyond minor drug offenders the harder inmates would be a waste of teacher time and talent and likely be a danger to others. Maybe enroll the bottom 50% a factory task that yields a product society can use, e.g making fences.
Better to set up tuition-free network for homeless and indigent.
3
People who commit crimes receiving an education at taxpayers expense? Rewarding criminal behavior? Yeah, treating convicts like the prodigal son was treated by his father is how to rehabilitate those who will be rehabilitated. But it really needs to be understood that educating career criminals will not rehabilitate them, it will just enable them to commit crimes with a good education. So this is not going to be the magic bullet that many seem to think.
6
I want to believe you. I really do.
But - for many, you are mixing cause and effect. Not everyone has the same abilities, not everyone has the same interests - for some sitting still in a classroom is torture. This is why mainstreaming lower performing kids into regular classes all too often hurts BOTH sets of students, by making the lower performing students think less of themselves while distracting the teacher.
Prisons should have education available and encouraged, absolutely. Safe, and non-disruptive ways to allow participation in college is great. I'm a big fan of redemption, rehabilitation, not punishment. And schools in poorer areas need a LOT more investment, they need to be a safe haven where disruptive students, and violent students are kept from the others and still educated. But it's not a panacea, it's not the cause of all crime.
2
College is a privilege. I do not think incarcerated people should receive it automatically. Nope sorry.
9
A better approach would be to use prisoners as labor. They would help cover the costs of their incarceration and learn usable skills in the process. I sincerely doubt we need to create prisoners with a BA in poetry.
10
Prisoners as a whole don't tend to be an especially bright bunch - especially the ones who get caught.
11
Speaking of the "especially bright," ...
All prisoners get caught.
1
The concept of providing access to education for prison inmates is supported by research and precedent. The punitive, resentful mentality of so many people, coupled with the profits being reaped by the prison industry, are the principal obstacles to making enlightened policy the norm instead of the exception. Meanwhile, cynical, corrupt politicians routinely recite their superficial platitudes in farcical campaigns that demonize and distract.
4
Anyone else find it odd that Title IX has us kicking men out of college on nothing but the say-so of ex-girlfriends but seeking to offer college for free to men convicted by a jury of their peers?
5
Actual convicted forcible rapists would be supported by surviving working rape victims' tax dollars.
1
Fantastic Idea. But wouldn't that make inmates smarter than those who arrested? A system that needs the upper hand can never lift those it deems "less" to be "more". That's how it gets away with rampant incarceration and repeat offenders. Can you imagine empty prisons? Horrid thought by some......
let's help those who play by the rules first. Then, if there is extra left...
2
Great idea. Hope it becomes the norm.
2
There is also a certain amount of fantasy going on here, that having a degree is some sort of guarantee of gainful employment. A black person with a college degree and a criminal history is still a black person with a criminal history, degree or not. Without addressing racial discrimination in employment, not to mention the reluctance of employers to hire ex-cons, a degree is just something to hang on the wall.
2
This will do for crime and punishment what “gun free zones” did to stop mass homicides.
2
"Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities. Instead of languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry — just like college students. Or even with them."
Colleges today depend on government funding designed to produce climate "science" that agrees with progressive politicians' propaganda that oodles of taxpayers' money is desperately needed to address global warming.
Indoctrinating prisoners in government climate science--at taxpayers' expense--to advance the politicians' agenda to tax them even more to spend more on global warming, should be prohibited by the Bill of Rights: Inflicting cruel and unusual punishments is forbidden by the 8th article of the BOR.
College programs in Prisons exist now. Sing Sing has a small program in place now provided by a small non profit called Hudson Link. These programs are a very successful approach to Disciplinary issues inside of jails and have great results in reducing recidivism. The programs change the way the inmates view themselves...going from thugs to students is a huge positive. They will live among us when they are released. Who would you rather meet on the street....thug or a college grad?
2
An article on the NYT front page is about machines for bricklaying and mentions there is a shortage of bricklayers.
We have people who can't get jobs.
We have jobs going unfulfilled.
Let's give people in prison the opportunity to learn a trade that has job demand.
Average income for bricklayers is $50,000.
They can learn literature, too.
One for the stomach and one for the soul.
8
Turn prisons into institutions of climate change and other forms of liberal indoctrination? That sounds like a wonderful deterrent to crime. I just wonder if it's too cruel.
4
No mention of the Bard Prison Initiative, which has been providing rigorous liberal arts education at six NY correctional facilities since 2001. Students are provided the opportunity to earn an Associate in Arts degree, which in turn can help inmates to apply for an earn early parole. "Highly acclaimed, widely emulated." See:https://bpi.bard.edu/
3
Let's take it a step further: turn prisons into high schools. That way, if the offender is a minor, he can finish high school. But I'm sure parents won't go for this, for the same reasons GIs returning from the War were made to take the GRE rather than be allowed to go back to their old high schools.
1
What's that old saying? "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." That's what we have now.
5
First make college free to everyone who didn’t commit rape or robbery, then make it free to felons. You shouldn’t have to shoot somebody or rape somebody to get free college.
7
IQ comes into play here, as it does with everything else in life. I would suppose that the average IQ of criminals is below that required for college-level work. The average IQ in the nation as a whole is 100. People with IQs of less than 100 don't much benefit from college nor do they need it to function in society. Teach criminals how to get up in the morning and get to work on time, and we will have accomplished a lot.
4
Elizabeth Hinton wants prisoners to take classes in climate science (a hold-up dude wants to be a climate scientist?) or in poetry appreciation (a field that is hotter than any STEM field and guarantee to get you a job while in prison).
Looks like in America, the only way college becomes FREE is if you went to prison. Bernie, are you listening?
2
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the highly successful Goucher Prison Education Partnership here in Maryland:
http://www.goucher.edu/learn/goucher-prison-education-partnership/
5
Thank you, Lisa. You beat me to it.
I find it interesting that Joseph Smith suggested this almost 175 years ago, all the way back in 1844 (see General Smith's Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States (Nauvoo, Ill., 1844), p. 7; available at http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/NCMP1820-1846/id/2836):
"Let the penitentiaries be turned into seminaries of learning, where intelligence, like the angles of heaven, would banish such fragments of barbarism..."
An excellent idea now as then.
2
I just don't get how we expect prisoners who get back integrated into society and into real life to live a fruitious and worthful life if we haven't given them any tools to succeed in life and all that ends up happening is that they have to turn back to crime to survive.
2
So it's your idea to reward wrongdoers, right?
3
When this was tried in the 1960s, the inmates learned from the instructors, but the instructors also learned from the prisoners. The Symbionese Liberation Army was a group of instructors who had been radicalized by their prison experience and went out to kidnap, rob and murder. Perhaps there’s a reason some people are in prison besides society not offering them enough opportunities for free education.
1
This is one of the best ideas I've ever heard. If inmates are not up to college level work, it's an even better idea to get them up to speed. However, I would anticipate incredulity and undying opposition to this concept from Republicans, and from others as well.
2
Can't get into college? Can't afford tuition? Just commit a major crime and you can get the education you want. Unfortunately there's a flip side to every well meaning idea or proposal.
4
One out of every 200 Americans is in prison - the highest incarceration rate in the world. Many incarcerated individuals from all ethnic and racial backgrounds have a similar histories: lack of parental support, parental stability, and parental employment; history of abuse; attended failing schools; experienced nutrition problems; experienced mental health problems; behavioral/cognitive problems, and, of course, poverty. Studies show Kindergarten is too late to intervene. If we invest in prisoners, we should also invest in future prisoners. Wiser people than myself know what programs will work. It would cost money to slow the pipeline to prison, but it would be unquestionably cheaper than mass incarceration. It's a government problem (mandatory minimum sentences), it's a financial problem (lack of economic opportunity), and, frankly, it's a cultural problem, where certain cultures (within all races) inculcate criminal activity. College course for prisoners presuming attainment of sufficient high school-level education) is a fine idea. But, for every dollar spent on educating prisoners, $5 should be spent on early-childhood intervention in at-risk populations. But, this same newspaper has printed articles on prisoners dying for lack of basic health care. If there is no political will to spend money to keep prisoners alive, I doubt the will exists to educate them. And, with any such program, legislatures should take action to lower the cost of college for everyone else.
4
Who can argue that society benefits if our incarcerated population is rehabilitated while serving their sentences? And education surely seems like a good way to do this. But as many other responders point out, what about the law abiding citizens who find themselves saddled with college debt? No argument that Prof. Hinton makes good points, but by presenting them in isolation of a discussion of the costs of higher education to society at large, she unintentionally, I'm sure, antagonizes many. This piece strikes me as a textbook example of why many folks have turned away from liberal thinking and toward Trumpean "logic".
3
I've wondered why they don't do this everywhere. You literally have a captive audience. Many of them are there, at least indirectly, because they lacked the resources or background to pursue further education in the first place. Provide education, mental health care, socialization, healthy food (some coming from poverty may never have known a good diet), exercise. And a transition program that links newly-educated prisoners to employers who will take them. Maybe they get day "internships" during incarceration, while returning at night. (This could be an earned privilege, and could allow them to bank some money to help get a new start when released.)
If its supposed to be about rehabilitation, then let's rehabilitate!
32
Where is your solicitude for either the VICTIMS of criminals or the millions of working class people who never broke the law but can't afford to pay for college without going into a debt of 40K or more?? Or for the people who will be raped or murdered when you give violent criminals little holidays from prison, which they will use to harm innocent citizens?
4
Why assume that being in favor educating prisoners means one does not care about the victims of crimes. C’mon.
1
As long as we are sending students thousands of dollars into debt for a college education, the idea of giving it to people for free because they committed a terrible crime is a non-starter. First let's get higher education affordable (or free) and then I think society might be more amenable to this.
4
Having worked with vocational programs for the incarcerated and employability programs for released prisoners, I applaud this article.
That said, my greatest challenge has always been to place those with the stigma of being an ex felon and particularly an ex felon of color into the workforce. Racism and prejudice still trump the education and skills training they have received while incarcerated.
Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32% of the US population, they comprised 56% of all incarcerated people in 2015. The issue of training prisoners within the system goes far deeper.
16
agree....in the educational process of mainstreaming the "handicapped" in the 70's & 80's, one of the toughest groups to educate were the "normal" people.
2
A prison sentence should MANDATE a compulsary Bachelor’s Degree....however long it takes.
I have no expectations for Texas
but California could harness the technology and do this.
The Economy, and Society would be transformed.
Poor parenting, poverty, low self esteem, and poor educational outcomes are easily tracked to a prison cell.
The problem is, if you really drill down, dark forces in the economy actually WANT to lock people up and keep them there. Corporations running the prisons write the legislation and hand it to the politicians who pretend to serve voters.
They is no logical reason why a modern technology driven society hasn’t disrupted the existing prison model, other than the fact that School to Prison Pipeline is a MAJOR component of the US economy.
"Education justice"?
How about prisons focusing on ensuring that victims of crimes are timely paid the restitution courts order?
1
So in order to get a free education I should get myself thrown in prison? As it is, according to a 2016 report, U.S. spending on prisons and jails is three times the rate of spending on education. I would rather focus on improving public education so that our citizens don't end up incarcerated in the first place.
34
Sounds like an excellent idea. Just a couple thoughts though --
First, it is very hard to get a job with a criminal record. While education would probably be great for prisoners' minds and skill sets, it still could be very hard for them to find work.
Also, there may result in an imbalance where a criminal with his free prison higher education has better opportunities in life than the person from his background who has committed no crimes but was never given this level of education.
But still, I'd still be for this idea, as I think it would be beneficial to society as a whole.
Yes! People are in prisons not just because they made a mistake (sometimes a horrific one; often not) but in most cases because our society failed them long before they ever got to the position to make that mistake, whether from addiction, abuse, failing schools, etc. Education is a way we can go back and help right wrongs we collectively have done to a large, underserved chunk of our population.
I've taught in a grant-funded prison program where students earned G.E.D.s and A.A. degrees and I will forever be impressed by the intellect that would otherwise waste away behind bars. They are bright, driven, and inquisitive, and given the opportunity, they could become model citizens and turn their lives around -- and be examples for the kids that so many of them have.
20
I am always for education and rehabilitation for prisoners, however, we must also realize that the predatory "for profit colleges" are just waiting to prey on a new population, signing prisoners up for online courses they may or may not be prepared to take. The game is taking advantage of the Pell Grant money, not really caring whether the student drops out, as long as they enroll long enough for the "college" to get the Pell money. They take the money and run, and if the student drops out, the debt stays with the student and so they could get released from prison with one more strike against them, student debt. Beware of this when considering this issue!
Fantastic idea, one I've agreed with for many, many years. Alas, many people object that criminals would get a free college education, while non-offenders have to pay. It's a legitimate objection and it immediately requires asking why a basic state funded college education isn't available to everyone in the year 2018.
25
Maybe so for the small minority of the incarcerated who are able to do college work. I expect the great majority of those in prison would benefit more from remedial high-school courses and literacy classes.
3
"Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities."
If this author were to actually live in a prison for a while, she would then understand the character of most prisoners.
This naivete is not worth publishing.
5
As a retired college teacher, I agree with the author completely. Unfortunately, a large number of our fellow citizens view prison as punishment only, and that would include a majority of pols.
Gee what a novel idea--to rehabilitate our prisoners. Seems things have gone array. But it all doesn't have to be about a college education which the commitment required may be off-putting to many. But recently I mailed (thru Amazon, a requirement for another topic) a manager's course book by servsafe. So when the inmate comes out of prison, he'll have certification to work as a chef in a kitchen. This is vocational training requiring less input but as rewarding for the investment. At least people can be rehabilitated and have a prospect of making their futures prosperous, legally, rather than risk return for another crime.
9
A documentary I saw a couple oago, shows prisons in Norway. Norway has extremely low crime and recidivism rates. The low security prison resembled a kids camp. The first person encountered, riding a bike around the grounds turns out to be a prisoner.
The high security prison has private rooms for each inmate. The inmates have keys to their rooms and decorate as they wish. The prison staff there a made a welcome video, in which they take turns singing, "We are the world" to new inmates.
America, especially on the right, is obsessed with using violent punishment to solve every problem. It's not working. We have higher crime rates, higher murder rates, higher rates of police violence against both minorities and whites, a drug war that makes the drug problem worse, etc., etc.
Michael Moore called this documentary Where to Invade Next. He went around with an American Flag, asking people in other countries about how they do things.
At the end, we realize that all of the successful ideas that they give him were invented in America, then abandoned by us, as we "save money" by making every problem a law enforcement issue.
People talk about how Europe is over regulated, but if you actually go there you realize that he U.S. is far more regulated. (Try to run across the tracks to get to the right train platform here, for example.)
When your response to every problem is, "there ought to be a law," heavily armed law enforcement opposed by heavily armed criminals is the result.
17
Trump was on to something, we do need more Norwegians, but he didn’t realize that all that the “whiteness” could come with unintended consequences and end up improving the US prison system.
It seems the USofA has a fetish when it comes to incarceration. How about we educate our people outside of prison first? Address the root of the problem (lack of education opportunities for many) and in one or two generations prisons’ occupancy rates will decrease.
1
Imagine if we spent the money on victims of crime rather than on perpetrators of crime. Does Hinton care about the victims? Not that I can tell from this article.
Or we could spend the money educating people who have done nothing criminal, and who otherwise cannot get a college education without going into debt that it will take them decades to pay off. Why not think of their needs first?
1
Hey, if we turn colleges into prisons, state governments will be happy to provide full funding!
4
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago and went to Chicago Vocational High School.
I used to joke that sheet metal shop was career training for us when we went to prison and made license plates.
While college is a noble idea, most of my classmates would not be ready for college.
But let's give them an education. There are trades to learn. Get their basic reading and basic arithmetic levels up. Give them a class on budgeting. Give them a class on parenting. Get them reading the NY Times. Teach them Word and Excel, how to write a letter.
Lots of wonderful things to teach!
Of course, avoiding prison by reducing poverty, getting people educated and working and paying taxes instead of paying for welfare and prison would seem like a no-brainer.
But I know a lot of conservatives who would rather pay for prison than pay for preschool.
34
Well said. I agree that college level courses may not be the answer for all, but real vocational training may be an alternative. Last evening, on the news, I saw an interesting segment about young people apprenticing in plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc. While the starting pay is around $32,000, the potential upon attaining a level of skill may reach $100,000--and there is a shortage of those with interest or skills in these jobs.
1
Good points but I seem to remember that pre school is ineffective. How about say free or even paid birth control to reduce the supply of individuals who might find crime the only way to make it?
1
Let's see: more education at prisons means decreasing rates of recidivism. That means lower prison profits. So, it ain't happening.
There's money in keeping people under educated, ill educated or ill informed.
Wall street is the enemy of basic decency in society.
1
We need programs for everybody. Everybody needs affordable housing, insurance, education. I believe the main fault of democrats is special programs for special groups. If we are to win elections, we need to help the middle class.
2
Debt ensures that college grads go straight to work. Why do we force college on huge numbers of teenagers? To force debt on them! Why do we force debt on teenagers? To limit their freedom and control their behavior. Free education for prisoners is important because it promotes the well-being of our inmates and also because it underscores a great irony in American society: no matter what, whether you break laws or abide by them (or both), you're trapped!
3
The author of the Bird Man of Alcatraz, Thomas E. Gaddis, created one of the first adult corrections based higher educational programs: Project Newgate. It ran from 1967 to 1973. (https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=74103 ). The program enjoyed support from the Oregon Department of Higher Education and the Oregon Department of Corrections and serves as an example of early efforts to interdict future criminal behavior which results in incarceration with exposure to higher ed and hopefully completion of a full curriculum leading to a degree...and improvement in relative labor market status, reduced criminal behavior and overall stability post prison and parole. It showed that these programs do work...but the commitment must be broad..with buy in from the community, corrections administrators and education experts.
I understand and agree to an extent what the author is suggesting but when you think about it rationally, it just doesn't make any sense. Families are buckling under the stress and pressure to send their kids to college; students are walking away with large amounts of debt in order to graduate--shouldn't people who haven't committed any crimes get the first pass at free college education? The author also doesn't mention whether this program would be for all inmates or a select group--what about violent offenders such as rapists, murderers, and others?
Also, it's not logical to assume that just because people are in prison, they're ready to learn. They, just like everyone else in this country, had 12 years of free education and obviously that didn't help them out much. Why would you automatically assume that once they're in prison, they'll see the enlightenment of education? As others have stated, many may not have reading or math skills above an elementary grade level, let alone a high school grade level. Teaching them college classes doesn't make any sense.
I certainly think that a small group of prisoners might excel in such a program but such programs shouldn't be publicly funded. I would much rather see students from lower-socioeconomic status households who are trying and earning good grades get a free college education.
19
The author does not know the first thing about prisons or prisoners. While some prisoners would surely benefit from educational opportunities, the idea that somehow we can transform prisons into schools displays shocking ignorance. Our criminal justice system needs many reforms. Articles like this one do very little to advance the discussion.
18
"Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities."
Yes, I can imagine this, and I can also imagine the skyrocket in crime that would follow. Is it really that hard to understand that prison is a punishment? A deterrent? If I'm thinking about stealing that car, a prison sentence is going to make me think twice. But if the worst I'm risking is a free education in a nice facility, why not just go for it? So many poor saps working hard to do the right thing, saddling themselves with student loans, and let's give criminals a free education. That will go over really well.
3
Unfortunately there are too many people who think Jails are there to punish offenders, not to rehabilitate them. This kind of thinking, leads directly to the situation we have today of repeat offenders. When they are finally released, they have no alternative but to go back to what they were, before incarceration. People have to learn, this accomplishes nothing!
I agree with the vast majority of the comments here: this is a good idea, but free college for all is a better idea, and should come first.
37
I'm not so sure that free college is a better idea. You get what you pay for. In continental Europe, educational fees are laughably low (e.g. 500 USD per year for medical school) but 90% of medical students fail that first year, because the system of totally taxpayer funded education is designed to weed them out. Crowded classes, the early bird gets a seat. (And, you'd better be there early.) This is the downside of free or almost free education.
It will be worth our time to also look at the front end of this problem of which a huge piece is addressing the schools and homes that are just like prison--poverty not only of material goods but poverty of hope, poverty of choice, poverty of any sense of wonder and safety, poverty of health, poverty of opportunity.
Education is the only way out, especially for those who have been locked in.
3
This will only work if there is free college for all, like many European countries have. Some states allow inmates to take online courses, but only if they can pay for it which most inmates can't. If we allow free college to prisoners, that would be unfair to the students piling up massive debt on the outside. So what to do? Free college for all. We could cut the bloated budget of the military and tax the 1% and make a better life for all.
12
In addition to the benifits to the prisonors/students, this would be a great way to put more people to work as proffesors or other academic jobs. If nothing else it could be part of a jobs plan/stimulus. Even if each program has only a few faculty, it would be more people working. Education is a more or less fungible commodity, its not like if the goverment put people to work by building extra cars no one needed.
2
Too often we view complex problems as a zero sum equation. I believe that law-abiding people should have access to a college or vocational education at low cost or no cost, quite frankly. We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world and we can afford to do this if we had the political will to do so. Student loan debt in this country is repugnant and reflects poorly on us as a society.
Having said this, I also believe society is well served by providing inmates with the same opportunities for a college or vocational education. As someone who has worked in the state and federal criminal justice system for nearly two decades, I know that most of the people that are incarcerated will return their communities. Like it or not, it is in our best interests to help them develop skills that will improve their chances for success.
10
Stated Perfectly, Steve.
Certainly this is good. But beware the perils of another Stephanie Roper situation, as some prisoners will try to game the system. Safeguards must be included.
This is great, but if society is going to buy into the idea that it will benefit from providing a free education to inmates, it will first have to believe the same about ALL people, including as a preventative against a life of crime.
39
this is the best idea I have ever seen in the NYT. Lets face it, most of the "prisoners" are in that spot because they had lousy or zero education. The schools were/are dumps, many of the teachers are there for a pay check, and those who actually care have very little support often have to buy their own supplies, and the deal with social issues that would blow the minds of teachers in schools who look at kids who come to school, unarmed, with full bellies and at least a slight degree of wanting to be there.
My experience with prisoners is that they mostly have the intelligence to handle a good scholastic program. They deal with ideas and strategies fairly well.
Be money well spent and would certainly do more for rehabilitating the prisoners. Self respect is a very misunderstood concept. Giving these individuals a good full on education, art, science, literature history would do a lot for lifting their self respect and their human relations skills and giving them some employment generating skills would be most useful as well.
5
Yes and we can learn from Germany's penal system too. See "60 Minutes" for a basic understanding of how it works there. We need to begin to think of people in prisons as possibilities to educate and enrich society, and take with them the skills and healing to help those people they left behind.
2
I would rather see strong GED programs in jails for people awaiting trial, and then some mechanism to give credit on sentencing for those who complete them.
2
This is an excellent idea but the whole process might be better served if public education received the support it so desperately needs and youth were able to skip the step of having to get incarcerated in order to get higher education. Ignorance may well serve the needs of employers looking for cheap labour and politicians wanting an unquestioning base but the nation as a whole needs a well educated populace if it wants to advance in this rapidly changing world. The investment will repay itself many times over.
2
The concept of prison is to pay for crimes against society. It’s NOT supposed to be a nice place but a deterrent. But now we want to turn them into colleges? Why not add heated pools, full gymnasiums and sauna’s? Or how about teaching our kids to study at school instead of studying AFTER they commit a crime.
6
So, millions of LAW ABIDING working class citizens over 50 were thrown to the curb when entire industries were offshored, and are now unable to find employment because their skills are obsolete and no one suggests free job training or college for them, even though they have worked and obeyed the law all their lives. But people who have never worked but instead have devoted their energies to harming others DO somehow deserve an expensive education, as well as free room and board??? That's the suggestion here?
5
Yes because they are usually young it is cheaper to educate them to find meaningful lives than it is to pay corporations to keep them in lifelong incarceration. We need to talk about this.
Education is out there for law abiding 5O somethings who lost their jobs but if they’ve already let their bodies go, visible evidence,
then quite possibly, they have let their minds slip as well, and would rather stay home on the sofa and watch tv. No one wants to talk about this.
First, you are an ageist. Secondly, you obviously know NOTHING about life in the US. Education is NOT "available" in the US to people who have no money, without incurring tens of thousands of dollars in debt. But the most offensive part of your post was your virulent ageism as well as your looks-ism. There is NO correlation between weight and intelligence, NO facts suggesting thin people are more intelligent.
You cannot possibly claim to take crime seriously and to want to fight and eliminate gangs in this country, without taking studies like those mentioned in this op-ed seriously.
Being "tough on crime" may SOUND tough, but is in real life the weakest approach possible, as it doesn't protect citizens from becoming victims at all, it merely punishes criminals AFTER they already attacked their victims.
The only serious way to be tough on crime, is to prevent it from happening in the first place.
And that's where our current incarceration system is VERY weak too. It mainly takes criminals out of society for a couple of years, all while allowing them to enter into a totally new social environment, one where only criminals live and where socializing and developing your own identity means incorporating all those criminal codes of behavior that you didn't learn in the outside world yet.
In such a situation, the very LEAST we could do is to make sure that during their years in prison, criminals get a chance to learn how to develop an alternative way of living, where violence and crime loose their relevance.
And if studies show that providing access to college is doing exactly that, we should have done so a long time ago already - and of course, it goes without saying that doing so for non criminals too would be a first and important step into the direction of preventing crime BEFORE it's committed too ...
2
"climate science or poetry..." Were we to finance prison-schools, I hope we would inculcate a lot more of these subjects than do most of our "colleges."
Check what an Indian Police head Kiran Bedi did in the Tihar jail in India. Tihar jail that had the most notorious criminals. She went for meditation vipassana and enrolled all her police officers and prisoners in meditation. There is documentary on it. This was also adapted by dhamma brothers in the US who also practice vipassana meditation. The prisoners returned to serve as volunteers to the jails, because their lives were transformed.
2
Just as a side note, please watch the 2018 Academy Award nominated documentary Knive Skills. It focuses on the first class of ex-prisoners who are trained to run a restaurant in Shaker Square, Ohio. It reinforces what this article proposes.
1
Inmates have two immediate needs upon release which, if fulfilled, have proven to reduce recidivism rates by 50% or more: (1) a job, and (2) affordable housing. Only the NYT would solicit policy makers to guide inmates into low paying soft job markets such as poetry and climate science. As one who has served for many years as a mentor inside a men's prison, I can assure you that Mike Rowe has a much better plan: trade skills and nearly guaranteed employment upon release as electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, and mechanics.
6
Not everyone equates college to Shangi-La.
No doubt many in prison had learning challenges in school and suffered because they were trapped in Procrustean beds –– a one-size fits all American educational system that wastes the talents of children and citizens who'd rather work with their hands than read Shakespeare.
For some prisoners being enrolled in a college would be prison enough.
Offer other options available in tech schools and not only a "college" curriculum and then maybe we'd be setting up the incarcerated for a smooth transition to civilian life once their sentences are finished.
2
While I am very much in favor of giving people every opportunity to learn and make good use of their lives - ideally INSTEAD OF going to prison - it does strike me that for the NYT's center-left upper-middle-class demographic, college is the simplistic answer to every problem. Not everyone can, or wants to, complete a college degree. As our recent political events have clearly demonstrated, we need to make it possible for every working person to make a decent living.
8
"College for inmates" goes too far, at least on a broad scale. To start, there is the issue many people have already addressed: why should we give this free education to those who broke the law, rather than to those who did not? There is a vast difference between providing a library full of Plato and Hobbes and MLK for inmates to peruse on their own time, and providing full-fledged college education at the expense of the state and law abiding students.
But beyond that, this line of thinking only feeds into an extremely troubling issue pervasive throughout our society: you cannot succeed to your max potential unless you go to college. Providing classes for GEDs and trades are already prevalent throughout the criminal justice system, but their effectiveness is limited by this attitude.
Education is most certainly a vital part of our society, but we have taken it too far. We need to focus on dialing it back to allow people interested in the trades and business to flourish - and thus be less likely to be drawn to crime - without requiring a college education.
2
College students can vote. If we're going to do this, let's include the franchise as well.
1
There is absolutely no reason why people incarcerated for crimes shouldn't be educated while they are serving their time. It would be money well spent.
The problem is going to be convincing those individuals that education is good for them, and their enforced curtailment of their freedoms would be an excellent time to pursue that which could be of benefit.
Anyone over the age of 18 serving a two or three year sentence should be able to come out with a GED or an associates degree in something.
I would even consider making parole contingent upon successful completion of courses while incarcerated.
6
There’s no trouble convincing the incarcerated that college would be a good idea. They have waiting lists for these programs.
Google: Hudson Link
to be terribly negative here, there are already young people who commit crime for a place to be and a meal. Now it might be an opportunity for education.
should they be educated, sure. But there should be a very very stringent policy on who when and why they can earn the privilege.
get them the GED which is free at public schools, but no higher education degrees granted- study skills, interpersonal skills, computer skills so when they are released, if they do well, they could be recommended for educational opportunities. Its just too hard on the outside to get maintain and afford higher education for inmates to earn actual educational certificates on the state.
better, provide jobs when they get out.
4
So denied educational oportunites, they then get released. Then what?
When someone is in prison it's an opportunity to educate him/her. Why should we bother? So that once the person is released (and most prisoners will be released back into the community), they can find a job, they are literate, they have skills they can use that aren't related to criminal activity. Prison time ought to be used to rehabilitate criminals. They're punished by losing their freedom of movement. But we can turn that to our advantage and enroll them in programs designed to remediate their academic deficiencies. More than a few prisoners have not received a high school diploma, have learning difficulties, dropped out of school or never went. This means more than a few would benefit from getting an education in prison. Every prisoner that is released back into the community, that can find a job, that, as a result of that job never returns to prison, is a success. Don't we want to keep ex-prisoners, ex-prisoners? Education is one way to do it.
10
Everyone wants them to have a GED but some here at arguing against a college level education provided by you and me taxpayers. I don't want to pay for some murder or drug dealer to get a masters degree when I am struggling to pay my college loan. Let them pay for college like anyone else, or make it free for all of us. Its bad enough that we pay for healthcare for all the inmates. I dont want us to finance college. Not when so many of our best and brightest are denied college educations and they are doing all the right things.
I was Superintendent of Norfolk Prison in the 1970's and a close friend and student of Howard Gill's. The Norfolk experiment as he designed it was revolutionary and still would be viewed as such today. It was designed for a different era in both public attitude toward prisoners and in the type of prisoners then currently incarcerated. That is not to say that Howard's ideas or some of Ms. Hinton's ideas could not be implemented. However, I can attest from personal experience that it requires monumental changes in cultural thinking and in economic policy. Nevertheless, the system must change. As Karl Menninger demonstrated over 50 years ago in his book "The Crime of Punishment", there is no corrections in corrections.
15
We all need education, primary life skills, jobs that offer the dignity and independence of a living wage. Most education is valuable and should be prized. Prisoners need structured processes and procedures for eventual assimilation back into society. What happens is those living wage opportunities are lacking, often leading to return of incarceration. It is because we value business, the primacy of profitable business transaction exchange of human over our value of humanity. It is history and who we are, a self narrow mindedness of tyranny of the majority or more likely, money.
1
Since we're dreaming in the imaginary Liberal world....why don't we simply turn these criminals into good hardworking law abiding citizens.
1
Education costs money. Recidivism costs money. Tax dollars spent on education to prevent recidivism (is there a better "corrections" investment to do this?) are a long-term investment that will save taxpayers money. There are also the added benefits of valuing lives, empowering people, fostering independence, success, inclusion, and social contributions (including increased tax revenue) from many within the world's most massive incarcerated population. As a college teacher, I would be happy to work with incarcerated Americans.
7
Many inmates are not even functionally literate, and so do not have the reading and writing skills for college level or technical/vocational studies. They also lack necessary math skills. We should be providing all inmates with the level of education that will benefit them. Recidivism would decline if prisoners left prison with more skills and knowledge that will enable them to become not only gainfully employed but also better able to deal with the many other demands of daily life that require literacy and math skills.
10
Yes, the equivalent of a high school diploma — a real one, with reading good literature, learning about history, and learning math — would be a great start.
3
Money. Money. Money. This taxpayer is taxed out as I suspect most middle class taxpayers are. Despite my temporary federal tax "cut," all that did was squeeze my local and state governing tax bodies who can't afford to give me a tax cut while they pursue corporate tax breaks to persuade company relocations here instead of there for the sake of more low-paying drone jobs.
4
It seems it would be cheaper to pay more for education now and reduce poverty, get people educated, working and paying taxes than paying for welfare and prison.
In the meantime, this last Republican tax plan just cut taxes for the rich. This Republican tax plan will give the average tax payer about $7,000 over the next ten years and at the same time will add $67,000 to the same tax payers Federal debt credit card.
We can invest in billionaires and prison but not education and people.
2
Karen--You do know that tRump is pushing private prisons, who issue stock shares, and make money for themselves. About half of inmates, in our country, have committed non-violent "crimes," and probably shouldn't be in prison, in the first place. So, If you are objecting to educating inmates, you are about to fall off the wrong leg you're standing on.
2
On criminal justice questions, we Americans tend to be Puritanical - we insist on punishing criminals, not helping them. It only makes matters worse that for the last forty years or so we've been repealing laws and cutting back on social programs that aid the law abiding poor and working class. As long as people struggling to get by on the outside aren't getting help, it's going to politically impossible to do much for prisoners. In the end, our stinginess only increases the steep costs of recidivism.
https://politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/go-directly-to-jail-...
7
As an associate professor of economics, I see the sense in this. Do it, and I'll apply.
7
I'm for anything that improves the violent, sadistic, environments that most prisons are. The conditions in the majority of our prisons are ghastly. (And this, from a retired cop.)
I believe the best "education" would include self-improvement practices--like mindfulness training, so that no matter where a person ended up--and with whatever other education, he at least had a better ability to "get along" because he had an understanding of who he could be.
9
Dr. Hinton reminds us, in her stimulating and clearly written article, that restorative justice, rather than vengeance and unaccountable incarcerations, is viable, cost-effective, and even menschlich.It would be helpful if she wrote a second article briefly noting who and what- influential individuals and systemic stakeholders, with their agendas-have been the ongoing barriers to expanding such programs? As well as who, and what, can serve as "bridges" to initial,and sustained, development of such programs? As we move from data that can be trusted and generalized, to creating analyzable knowledge, and derived understandings, and even wisdom at times, during an era in which secular-science's mantra of "evidence-informed" reigns, criminal justice policy makers behave as if they are willfully blind about viable, needed changes. Deaf to innovative options. Ignorant about the implications and consequences of their unaccountable decisions and policies. And all of this is enabled, in a range of ways and levels, by many of US; whether we mean to, or not. Dr. Hinton could continue to help us to better understand the range of viable options which exist.For example, groups to turn to in our own range of daily roles.
1
No matter what you may think of prisoners or their particular crimes, it is in our own self-interest to try and ensure that EX-cons are best able to integrate back into society and land on their feet, secure safe housing, jobs, have mental health support, job counseling etc. For when we do NOT do so, we see the results. Ex-prisoners become homeless, destitute, and are roaming the streets, often reverting back to a life of crime.
Honestly, what do we expect?? But then, one has to wonder if this is exactly how our govt would prefer it. For by limiting any 'success' for ex-cons, it is more likely they'll end right back in prison. And just think how nice that is for our revolting for-profit prison system.
5
how laughable is this idea? These guys are in prison, in part, because they did not take advantage of the educational opportunities given to them as children and teenagers. Now you want to turn prisons into colleges to motivate prisoners so that they will have job opportunities once they are released. Please. Let's instead go back to "Scared Straight."
4
Not laughable at all. Our recidivism rates are terrible, so what we're currently doing isn't working
Make eligibility to be considered for parole contingent on their successful participation in offered educational opportunities.
That would solve those problems in a heartbeat.
You didn't read the article, did you?
Yes, this is a sound idea. If education levels are so closely correlated with incarceration, why not try to fix that at the earliest possible stage? Perhaps even better solution would be both to reform and invest in our K-12 education system so that prison college is a last chance intervention for few.
4
Better prisons is a good idea, they are too much socialization machines for crime. Particularly they should have solid reading libraries instead of the junk array of manuals and used out of date works you see in them now.
What would also be valuable would be to put Prof Hinton into a prison under an assumed crime for a few months, to flesh out her understanding of what she's talking about in articles like this, get her out of the clouds and put her feet on the ground. Would her devotion to her subject sufficiently motivate her to voluntarily enter a state pen for a supposed three year term with the knowledge she was out in 90 days? Paid, of course.
2
Do you need to have a heart attack to be a good heart surgeon? I believe it's possible to understand a topic sufficiently without going full-undercover.
How many students graduate college with skills sufficient to acquire good jobs. So why expect better results with a college prison. Why not try an old fashioned vocational school teaching skills in strong demand.
9
So, you take a bunch of convicts, most of whom cannot read, write or do basic math, and teach them all about climate science and poetry??? Do any liberals ever descend down from their lofty perches and work with reality??? How about we take all the future convicts, those children born out of wedlock that are unwanted and uncared for, and save their lives before they descend further into poverty, drug use and the related drug crimes which send most of them to prison? This would cause our society to make hard choices, which would hurt a lot of feelings in the process, but would be a better solution than throwing away money on people that will never be contributing members of our society!
8
What do you mean by "save them?" Because it instantly conjures thoughts of conversion-therapy and final solutions.
Professor Hinton's idea is n not new, and it is so sensible and practical that our politicians and "lock 'em up, throw away the key" enthusiasts for inhumane punishment would surely raise fear through propaganda to make sure the notion doesn't sweep the nation.
As with so many other internal problems that could be solved sensibly, enlightenment finds a hard time overcoming deliberate ignorance and satisfaction is permitting abuse.
Not only do we need to educate those incarcerated, we need to improve public education in so many ways. Too many would rather spend money on less-important issues -- or not spend money at all.
Consider the brilliance of innovators like Elon Musk whose millions could make big advances at home instead of in outer space.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
The idea that prisons are for rehabilitation is not realistic. Prisons exist to protect the public from security threats. We do not send someone to prison for murder to rehabilitate them, we send them to prison because the have taken someone's life and are a threat to do it again.
However, if we are so insistent on providing free college, perhaps we merely need to send college kids to prison because as we learn in the article, prisoners are superior students. Prison would give the kids some discipline, free meals, free lodging, free health care and a chance to meet people from all walks of life. What more could they ask for? And hey, rooming with with killer, rapist etc is not a big deal because those people are fine individuals and need to be understood and blended back into society because they have been disenfranchised. I mean hey, Ted Bundy was a highly intelligent prisoner, who wouldn't want such an intellect as a suite Mate!
3
We need far fewer crimes and fewer criminals. Deterring citizens from becoming criminals in the first place and focusing on rehabilitating and releasing criminals is the best option.
We need fewer prisons. College is not for everyone. We need hopeful functioning working citizens. A vocational or a trade can be as valuable as a college education in a service oriented on-line hi-tech American economy
The 2.3 million Americans in prison are 25 per cent of the world total with only 5 percent of humanity. While blacks are only 13 percent of Americans they are 40 percent of the prisoners because blacks are persecuted for doing the same things while black that whites do without any criminal justice consequences.
There are too many people in prison for non-violent drug related and property crimes. Drugs should be legalized and treated as a potential health abuse problem akin to alcohol and tobacco by taxation, regulation, education and restriction. Poverty is the root cause of property crime.
Prison should be reserved for the violent, the career and the organized who are the greatest threat to human life, socioeconomics and politics without regard to color aka race, ethnicity, national origin, faith, socioeconomics or education.
5
Completely agree!
1
really? that 13% commits 49% of all homicides.
2
I just want to add social predators like Bernie Maddoff to your list.
There’s no question that some people belong in prison.
1
A reduction in rates of recidivism is one of the reasons given for providing inmate college education. It may be that this education is the reason for decreased recidivism; it may be, however, that the inmates interested in receiving education are the ones more likely not to commit future crimes. In other words, the lower recidivism is not the result of education, but because opportunity for education tends to draw persons who are less likely to commit future crimes.
3
Few realize that some years ago college courses were routinely offered at prisons. I am a now retired professor of sociology. Decades ago I was invited by a graduate student who was teaching the course to give a lecture at a Kansas prison. What I found were inmates hungry for knowledge.
My thinking is this. Not only should university education be free to all, it should be made freely available to those currently in our prisons. It may well be that education cannot cure all our social problems, but wouldn't it be wonderful if it solved most of them? A country as great as ours should try.
3
If there ever is a successful American revolution of the masses against the establishments, past revolutions being forecast, then the new revolutionaries will adopt Prof. Hinton’s excellent idea by educating the imprison
ed politicians and billionaires. Re-education courses for what Mark Twain defines as our “native criminal class” might start with college courses in climate control, ethics, basic economics, American history, and our Constitution.
Would not we all enjoy the video of Trump, Sessions, Tillerson, the Koch Brothers joining the Clinton’s, Obama, Senators Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, et al in such prison seminars with the likes of James “Whitey” Bulger?
The remarkable thing about this piece not the ideas, which are passe' but that there is no mention whatsoever of any downside. And there's mention of the lack of mention as in, "... for now, let's just make believe ...." It's like a giant red flag with "clueless" written in bold italic type. Does the downside just go away if we don't mention it? Am I the only reader who needs an even hand in proposals to feel they are valid?
People who have been in a prison in for instance upstate NY know that they are full of educational opportunities and expensive facilities and look very much like a community college. All the inmates participate. They do so willingly for "movement" the prison colloquialism for being able to interact with your homies that you would not otherwise get near in the facility. The classes are not "graded" because you cannot insult or confront grown cons by criticizing them as you would in a real collegial environment. Though their behavior is quite decent as it is enforceable most all the participants include crime as part of their lifestyle, a job skill.
I am absolutely for better incarceration, especially the provision of high quality books to men in hard institutions. HS degrees are generally provided now, college level courses are a good idea. Notice I've skipped any downside. ;)
3
People who end up in prison do happen to be unable to participate effectively in society. When the go into prisons, they find that they are not alone. They learn from the worst of the worst how to be even more destructive and dangerous. So providing knowledge and skills which are means to participating constructively does make sense. But if the mean and hateful people that they are inside their poorly developed psyches are not made whole and benevolent, they will turn their new skills to crime.
3
In a world of infinite resources, this would be an excellent idea. However, as we live in a limited world, I have to ask if it is a just allocation of those resources to give those who break the law college educations while making those who have obeyed the law pay for theirs?
GED/High School equivalence programs in jails do not suffer from this problem as that level of education is offered outside for free as well. However, there is, in my opinion, a basic unfairness in offering lawbreakers benefits not offered to the common citizen.
4
Resources are always limited. Does that mean that any change is automatically unaffordable?
There's a good case to be made that college tuition should be free to all. Other countries do it, without limitless resources.
What might we do? Imagine, say, a 2% lifetime income tax surcharge on all college degrees (perhaps 0.25% per semester). That would surely more than pay expenses, and not impose anything on anyone who chose not to go.
1
It all depends what the goals are for imprisoning people. Is it strictly punishment or do we want to make society, as a whole, safer? The vast majority of inmates will be released one day. When they are, do we want them to be more angry and alienated than they were when they went in or do we want them to have a good shot at being successful in life and staying out of trouble? If the answer is the second, then providing opportunities for self improvement is a no-brainer. And nothing creates self-confidence and the skills to succeed like a good education.
2
We used to teach courses like this here in Florida back in 1970s. I don’t believe we still do, at least not through the local college.
1
So many great comments that reflect on how broken we are as a society. By educating the incarcerated we can heal some of the broken for the benefit of humanity. Perhaps someday paid college tuition for prisoners could be provided to those outside of the walls as well. It seems to me that the wealthiest nation on earth should have the most educated and healthiest population.
2
Unfortunately in America, college education has become a for profit industry. And that means that there are many people in college who don't belong there. It also means that college has become the new high school but instead of it being "free" it's costly and can be a waste when the students cannot complete their education. The only ones who win on a consistent basis are the entities making the loans.
Prisoners often don't have high school degrees, have learning disabilities, came from schools or districts that didn't have the money to spend on what they needed, and ought to be enrolled in programs that get them to a point where they have a high school degree and a vocation once they are released. If we don't want to do this we should be willing to spend money up front before prisoners are prisoners. Otherwise, if we don't want to keep the revolving door going, we have to do it when they are in prison. We will always have prisoners but we can try to lower the population by providing a better K-12 education.
One could write a few books on why this is a great idea. But it should be and is obvious and at the same time an idea whose time seems not yet to have arrived. Why waste these lives? It should become national policy, state policy and local policy NOW.
Good idea. Better yet, stop incarcerating non-violent "offenders" and spend the billions of tax dollars saved on education and more productive employment for prison-industrial complex workers.
2
I teach African American History in a high-security men's prison in northern NJ. As someone who has taught in elite universities and colleges -- as well as state universities -- I can say that I have never had better students. Many enter the prison system without so much as a GED. All are required to earn their high school equivalency; but only a small proportion are admitted into the college program. My students are not good students because they have a lot of time on their hands (although that helps). Not only do they come to class fully prepared and having done all the reading, they push me to consider new ways of interpreting the choices and actions and motives of historical actors. Without Blackboard or email it is impossible to communicate with students between classes. Sometimes I give them something short to read on the spot -- usually a primary source that I choose after a previous discussion. I have never seen a group of students engage as actively as these students. If my experience is anything to go by, there is a great of wisdom behind bars.
11
US Society Cannot Continue to Bear the Burden of Revolving Prison Doors
Prison incarceration is more expensive than staying in a 2 star motel so, from a purely economic position, we need those people out contributing to society rather than being permanent anchors around the neck of all society. If we could cut the rate of imprisonment in half, that would mean $19.2B saved in 1 year, this calc was using wikipedia data. If these people were gainfully employed paying $8.000 in taxes each year instead of draining over $24K, they would be adding $6.4B to the US govts coffers for a net gain of +$25B to society and tons less problems. Just consider that.
As an old school discipline person crossed with a new school of let's improve everyone possible, I look at the military proven role model. Things earned are much more appreciated than things just given. Use a lot of carrots and large 2 by 4's, show the inmates what is available if they work for it but give stinky jobs as a way into it and as a reminder of what they are going back to if they screw up.
Life was never guaranteed to be easy or even fair but we must try to make it better for all or we face perpetual problems. Going to college is a great privilege from which all society benefits. Having a nice employed educated family next door is far better than having a prison recidivist living 20 miles away. IMO
1
I teach middle school in the inner city. Just recently my wonderful student, "Q", was shot while outside in the middle of the day. It was a driveby & he was a bystander. He was lucky--the bullet grazed his head. He has bad PTSD but physically is ok. (For now) One of the shooters, strangely, was another former student (not in the first student's year). This former student had had years of toxic bullying behavior, disrupting classes, selling drugs, terrorizing middle school students like Q, who is gentle and gay. Many many interventions were staged, including therapy, therapeutic school, doctors, social work, and so on.
He ended up in prison through his own poor choices compounded by trauma. He may end up turning himself around, who knows. But other students, many with still more trauma - hopefully including Q - will not wind up in prisons. Instead, they'll end up in the military, working, in college. The ones in college will take out loans & get grants & work their butts off.
Why should my students who work all their lives to do the right thing over incredible obstacles, be treated worse than students who make poor choices? There are far, far more people like Q.
This is a well meaning idea but poorly thought out. If education is a civil right, then everyone is entitled to it. It is very bad policy to reward prisoners before law-abiding struggling poor and lower class folks, not to mention the middle class.
5
In the first place, I know from personal experience that a prisoner who's an ongoing threat and disciplnary problem isn't going to be in the yards where the classes are, let alone the college programs.
In the second, it ain't a zero-sum game: it's not necessary to choose between the two.
In the third, why're you on the side of the people who want to cut the prison classes AND your studwnts' support?
3
You may imagine that all my students are future criminals in the making but I assure you that's not so. Most of my students - at least 70% - work really hard and will be productive citizens. I'm on their side. You are on the side of rewarding the students who commit crimes against my students *before* you reward my students.
We have limited money. Let's say you have 3 kids. You have $100. 2 kids have done as well as they could. The third has done no chores, beats up his little sister, spits on you. You decide to give $100 to him *first.* When the other two object, you say "it's not a zero sum game."
As far as a prisoner who is an ongoing threat isn't going to be the one who wants to learn--that is really obnoxious. You never know who wants to learn. One of my students is very troubled & dangerous to others, and will probably end up in 'juvie.' He is also very smart. He may not appear to want to learn, but he does. He loves drawing and reading.
However, does this mean he should get free college education when the kid whose hair he put on fire doesn't get it before him.
You say it's not a zero sum game. You are wrong. We don't have unlimited money. Where we decide to put our money says everything about our values. And you are valuing the perpetrators over the victims.
1
Of course this makes sense. It’s cheaper to educate than to incarcerate. However, punishment just feels so much better. Our prison system is not based on logic, it’s based on punishment. Trying to get money to improve education in urban schools is like pulling hens teeth. Just imagine the outcry for criminals getting a free ride while middle class parents are struggling to get their own children into colleges. This Christian nation will never be on the forefront of Prison reform. God, after all, will be punishing me for an eternity just because I don’t believe in him. Where’s the logic in that’s?
3
Various private and public colleges in New York State, along with state government, have been active on this front. Participants are not just Cornell and NYU. See:
http://www.hudsonlink.org/partners/colleges/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/nyregion/cuomo-to-give-colleges-7-mil...
http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/news/john-jay-college-selected-second-chance-pe...
https://citylimits.org/2017/01/17/patchwork-of-education-programs-for-ny...
Given the frat murders, let's turn colleges into prisons.
"...prisoners, a group that has disproportionately attended under-resourced public schools."
Bingo! Perhaps we should apply educational and other socially positive resources before we send these people to prison and avoid that trip altogether. Just a thought.
The article dances around the innate racism and racialism of America's criminal justice/prison industrial complex. Many people believe the fact that so many inmates are black and that their right to vote can be permanently denied them is a lot more than an unfortunate coincedence. The plantation mentality of keeping black people ignorant and powerless is live and well and the prison system is a good way to pursue those ends. Jim Crow lives. There is a large constituency in this country, lately more visible and vocal, who will actively resist turning thousands and thousands of black males into Malcom X's and Barak Obama's.
3
Great Idea. Go even further. Make all sentences educational. http://www.lockportjournal.com/news/local_news/class-time-instead-of-jai...
1
Coincidentally, last Sunday, there was a segment on 60 Minutes contrasting the difference between the German and the American prison system.
"60 Minutes Presents: Behind Bars S50 E24 (43:33)
The prison system that emphasizes rehabilitation over punishment; a bank robber who became a law professor; and beautiful music inside the "waiting room of hell"
Recidivism rate is much lower than in the US/
The show is available for free on the Internet,
3
So if you break the law and go to prison you will get a free college education, and if you are law abiding, you are saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt that will take you twenty five years or more to pay off? Got it.
5
Maybe the best take away here is that higher education shouldn't require 2t years of debt...
Well it certainly shouldn’t be the consequence of a felony.
In 1997, when the Pell grants were no longer applicable to inmates, we went into a NY State women's medium security prison where the only way inmates could get college credit was through the CLEP program. That program ended when CLEP limited the courses only through computers. Inmates had little to no access to computers.
We began a long search for available colleges to grant credit with non matriculating courses. In 2001, my colleague, Dr. Johanna Foster and I were able to secure Nyack College, and eventually Mercy College giving accrediting accredited classes.
We were the first in a NY State correctional facility, through the generosity of Vassar College, to offer an inside out program to our students. This involved 12 Vassar students bussed in to sit next to 12 our students with two Vassar professor facilitating a credited class.
The multiple benefits to the students was so evident, not only to them, who found their voices, but their children who now had positive modeling from their moms. Upon returning home, many women continued their higher education, enabling them to be contributing, productive, responsible citizens. We all benefit from that.
Respectively submitted. Gina Shea, MAT
1
Education is something many pretend to support, but refuse to fund, which is the bottom line. We are becoming a nation incapable of knowing the difference between a fact or opinion, functionally illiterate. I propose deducting from the defense department and prove that we value education by funding - K through college, and indeed for those incarcerated. Every dollar for education will be multiplied by an enlightened populace, better jobs, quality of life, and less needed for incarceration. Please vote for the democrats who will support education over obscene unnecessary tax cuts, that is leading us further behind other civilized societies.
3
Spend the money on children and families before they go to school. Continue that support through high school and two years post secondary education.
Spend the money before they go to jail.
Why don’t we try it? Can’t hurt.
1
Now imagine one needn't break the law in order to go to college. What a message free tuition for felons but high tuition for everyone else would send. Not to mention that there are felons who are not qualified for higher education but a lot of kids who can't afford it are. Now, if tuition were free....
The “1994 crime bill,” aka Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 , was signed by Pres. Bill Clinton and Co-President Hillary Clinton (SEE: independent bill and Hillary two for one)
The law the Presidents Clinton signed also:
• Mandated violent criminals had to do a min. of 85% of a sentence if a state took funding for expansion of the Prison-Industrial Complex
• “[P]rovided funding for tens of thousands of community police officers [stop & frisk and broken windows policing] and drug courts, banned certain assault weapons, and mandated life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes. The mandated life sentences were known as the “three-strikes” provision.” https://www.factcheck.org/2016/04/bill-clinton-and-the-1994-crime-bill/
Facts matter.
If you are poor and uneducated and do not have too many options, you may think a life of crime is OK and if you are caught a free college education, medical / dental/ optical / Rx coverage, then job placement a fresh start, while debt free, is a viable and attractive upside. (Not to mention pardons, commutations and not even asking about conviction history.)
College in prison is a good idea. The prisoners should be able to opt-in or out. The prisoners should also incur educational debt (zombie debt) just like everyone else.
Prison used to be seen as paying a debt to society, now it is a way to earning benefits from society.
Tragic.
2
This is a great plan. Of course, not every one is suited to higher education - so there could be trade skills taught. I have long been frustrated that prisons did nothing to solve problems, and made a lot of people worse than they went in. Looking at mental health, job training, counseling, and addressing addiction would make the ex-cons able to contribute once released, and give them a chance at a fulfilling life. We all deserve that.
I cannot speak for Washington State, but here in New York the trade school teaching already exists. Our prison system teaches welding, plumbing, mechanical drawing, and many other areas of expertise, but I am not sure how much good it does in preventing repeat offenses.
Some commenters have cited a drop in the recidivism rate of 43% for those who took the prison courses as evidence of the courses' effectiveness.
A quick note on selection bias and causality: it is not known if those prisoners became less likely to commit new crimes because they took courses, or if the prisoners who were already less likely to reoffend--for myriad reasons unrelated to the courses--were the ones who signed up and were selected for the prison courses.
Even if it is the latter, lower risk prisoners self selecting for continuing education, that doesn't mean it is a bad idea. It just means that one shouldn't put too much stock in the rehabilitative powers of prison college courses.
2
The only way of correcting for this would be to assign prisoners to the courses at random, which makes statistical sense but not for the real world.
To Mike, if the sample size is large enough, you could also look at other factors that predict recidivism—eg gang membership, number and type of crimes, age etc—and control for them in the analysis.
The better question is, “Will colleges begin to address and reflect the world around them?”
Of course they will. The world around them is evolving. Evolving. Evolving. Daily. Even as we read this article the world is evolving. Education is more than a civil right. It is the chance to become an essential part of evolution, a contributor to the thrust forward into an amazing future with all its new challenges, new solutions and new glimpses of yet more to come. The whole world is moving into the future. Why do we chain prisoners to the past?
Great. Now my kids have another way to get a college education besides joining the military. Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea and I support it, but there are plenty of people out there who would appreciate some help getting a college education. I would put imprisoned criminals pretty near the bottom of the list that ought to get free college. On the list, but at the bottom.
71
This does not take money away from your children, Peter. Pell Grants to incarcerated people are small because these grants are based on financial need. In other words, you have to earn below a certain amount to qualify. The teachers who teach behind bars are adjuncts, and are thus paid very little money. Most do the work because they understand that almost all of these men and women will one day be released and it's better for the community, and our society, if they are educated and can contribute to our tax base. I would also stress that housing these men and women in facilities costs money, too. Educating them is cheaper. Recidivism rates are also significantly lower. You make the common mistake of conflating the cost to educate those incarcerated with the cost of college for those who are not. What we need is more federal money to help all families afford college. But that is a totally different problem, and one that can be solved at the ballot box.
2
@Peter
You're the typical American who thinks that (1) prison doesn't have a cost, and (2) that trading freedom for a college degree is a fair trade and many would be willing to make it. You're paying for prison at the cost of at least $20,000/year in most states. And you continue to pay that once the released prisoner commits another crime and returns to prison. Wouldn't it be good to inoculate prisoners against a return? Prison is still prison: no Christmas or Spring breaks, no Summer internships, no gap years. So what makes you think that committing a crime would be very attractive to potential college students?
2
All the more reason, sir, that educational funding should be increased at all levels!!
This hits the nail on the head! It costs just as much as college to house them for each year, with no subsequent benefits to society (or themselves). But try selling THAT to 'law-n-order' Republicans like Trump and Sessions!
1
Rioconcho, Ironically, the GOP is trying to do something about the expense issue, they try to deport foreign criminals which would save billions of dollars which could be put toward education. But hey, that evidently just makes too much sense.
Incarcerated 1967 for refusing induction into the military, I was surprised by the hunger for books and ideas displayed by my fellow inmates of all education levels and racial backgrounds. Left to their own devices, inmates were doing things like attempting to synthesize Karl Marx and astrology. But they were also researching their cultural heritages and studying philosophy and politics. My sense was that many of them didn't know what to do when the adrenalin of the streets met the constricting boredom of the joint. Without formal educational channeling, they turned their differently animated minds willy-nilly to books available and ad hoc discourse among themselves. Fortunately there was a small library assembled by a Quaker during WWII that helped light the bonfire of ideas. In consequence, the enthusiasm for ideas and the values they reflected seemed to me transformative. Men of action became reflective and began to look at the world differently--less about playin' on the streets for wads of money and more about how one realizes ideas in the world. Some of these self-taught prisoners took their new-found ideas back to the streets and found expression for them in the black and Native American movements. One can debate whether this was the best outcome for society, but it seems indisputable that also attaining a degree would have been better for their personal lives long term. So why not tap this closeted energy? What's to lose making winners out of so-called 'losers'?
79
Three responses:
1. I have taught classes in prison, and I have said many times that the students I taught there were excellent and filled with promise. So, yes, turning prisons into colleges would be a wonderful and humane way to make incarceration beneficial, rather than merely punitive, and would prepare prisoners for their return to freedom. It's a win-win, that will benefit the students and society generally.
2. It is unfortunate that Prof. Hinton gives a shout-out to the elite institutions ("Harvard, Princeton,...") conducting prison programs, and fails to mention of the many state univerisities that do it.
3. If we are going to liberate prisoners to learn, let's also liberate college students from the tyranny of college administrators! ! I cannot refrain from quoting Michel Foucault's famous remarks. Foucault noted that all modern institutions emulate prisons' "regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality." And so, he asked, "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?”
73
To item 2: Yes--to name a few, Herkimer Community College, University of Michigan, Mohawk Valley Community College! But I wish I had a complete list.
1
I must add that I agree with a previous post stating that college level is hardly if ever, the level of education most inmates are ready for.
junior high level is where most have become lost in their own societies and social groups. that is when survival because of lack of family or social support for a growing man is lost, thereby turning his actions to crime.
1
@Chris
If you think that being in college is very much like being in prison, I can only feel sorry for you and your impaired judgment.
1
Plato thought education, knowledge was the best way for a society to elevate itself into civilization. "A study published in 2013 by the right-leaning RAND Corporation showed that inmates who took classes had a 43 percent lower likelihood of recidivism and a 13 percent higher likelihood of getting a job after leaving prison." Seems the Father of the Academy was correct.
This is what gives liberals a bad name.
A simple blanket solution to a complex problem.
Some prisoners can be educated. That is true. But to say that prisons in general can be turned into universities is false.
You want to increase opportunity?
Dignity is the thing you are aiming at here.
First, separate the violent prison population from the rest.
Second, legalize pot. Third, those with addictions go to treatment centers and not prison. Fourth, do not incarcerate just because the defendant is black (our justice system has a high degree of racism within it. If a white man and a black man go before a judge for the same crime, the black is far more likely to go to prison than the white).
Fifth, the mentally ill get treated at a mental facility.
Sixth, de-privatize prisons. The dollars incentivize incarceration.
Seventh, scratch the 'three-strikes you are out' policy. Let justice work on an individual basis.
Eighth, abolish the death penalty. It only makes society more brutal.
In between, educate those who want - and can - be educated but expect education to dignify some but not all. You can even mandate it be available on demand but expectations need to be managed.
Such broad statements give many the false hope that one solution fits all.
1
Why do we wait for men to be imprisoned before we bother to educate them?
Why are American schools failing millions of boys and young men? 50% of black males and 40% of white males are arrested before they turn 23.
Why do we run so many K-12 schools like regimented prisons? At least prisoners have recreational time outdoors part of the day. Schools have eliminated recess and PE and punish and drug children with kinesthetic learning styles.
When will we ever learn?
1
"Instead of languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry."
I would love that to happen, but I wonder where you live.
Where I live, many of the guys hanging out and dealing drugs have almost no language skills. Their conversations are barely intelligible. Their mothers didn't speak with them, sing to them, prepare them for school. Never mind their fathers. When they went to school, they were already behind. When they reached tenth grade, they could not write a complete sentence -- as my cousin, who worked in the Bronx as an audiologist-remedial reading teacher, can tell you.
When these men end up in jail, it's fifth grade, not college, courses they need.
Prison is very expensive. Teenagers' bringing babies into the world has its price.
117
I think you have something here. I'm all for increasing educational facilities in prisons, including college classes, but there are a lot of stats that suggest that people who end up in prison are having difficulties by third grade--not reading at grade level at the point where "learning to read" gives way to "reading to learn." Intervention earlier is better, but for people already incarcerated, acknowledging the fact that people are often in prison because they have fallen behind in the education system in the first place might be a reasonable first step.
4
All the more reason to provide educational opportunity early in life, with an assist to those who aren't born with the advantages that others have, ie. food on the table every night, (the same) roof over their heads every night, and someone to encourage their progress.
I don't know, Whitney. What does "educational opportunity early in life" mean? "The advantages that others have" are more than food on the table -- but parents who work to provide that food on the table, who encourage their kids' progress in school, who take them to the library. It can be done. It has been done. But not by far too many parents.
1
The place of prison, and prisoners, in our country is necessarily complicated. We use prisons as a warehouse for the mentally ill, and increasingly, for debtors who fall behind on their debts, to say nothing of the long and sordid history of using the penal system to enforce racially punitive "order." There are also efforts to "reform" prisons, and prisoners, led by otherwise unlikely advocates the Koch brothers (never known for their socially progressive views). You can go back to the 1880s and see the same arguments trotted out regarding whether prisons should be sites of possibility for prisoners, or merely sites of punishment, as detailed in the proceedings of the National Council on Charities and Corrections. As a country, we have favored "corrections" over "charities" and have the world's foremost incarceration rate to show for it. With Sessions as AG, the "growth potential " of incarceration rates is likely to increase, perhaps sharply, so kudos to this author for advocating for a small measure of justice amid a torrent of injustice.
1
Brian, So, evidently the prisons are full of people who default on student loans, default on mortgages or miss credit card payments? I would like to see the data on that.
Presently we turn the impoverished into commodities. In prison we charge them outrageous sums to make calls, send an email, receive money from their families- all we do is make money off them. Human capital and how we use it is the question of the century.
(If you promote slavery as a society, expect bad things.)
It would certainly end recidivism.
"It would certainly end recidivism."
Only for those who probably could have done well in middle and high school but somehow got turned around the wrong way.
Some people, by nature and by nurture, will never have the brain power or focus to profit from their studies; they didn't try before, and they will continue to scorn education while in jail. In my neighborhood, there's a sense of relief when some guys are taken off the street and disappointment when they show up again on their old corners; and no amount of education will fix them.
Some prisons do offer courses, and I'm all in favor of that. And some prisoners do turn around the right way. But let's not get too starry-eyed.
1
Good idea. I'll add this. Make the prison college classes available to anyone in the community who can't afford tuition and reject the idea of going in to debt.
Offer free higher education as an option to those so motivated to attend in a real prison as opposed to the quasi-prison setting in high schools with armed hall monitors and gym teachers.
1
Of course this is a good idea. Education is a major component of curbing recidivism. Even more importantly, we should provide real education opportunities for poor rural and inner-city kids. Let's not make going to prison the best way for poor youth to get an education.
I can't think of any more important way to spend our tax dollars than creating schools that would attract very young poor students. Tantalize them, and their parents, with schools that offer a safe, fun, learning environment with nutritious meals and understanding teachers. Show these young kids their potential. Expensive outlay to be sure but more important than so many other things we waste our resources on.
Reducing recidivism with better education for inmates is a laudable goal and should also be pursued for those that slip through the cracks, but why not educate these people before they become felons. I am sure money would be saved in the overall picture and there would be less crime to boot.
42
watch " The Wire". its all about where they end up when they get out whether or not they can succeed. Now are we supposed to provide jobs when they get out as well? at some point, it does need to "not pay" to be criminal. first separate those that need mental health services and deal with them appropriately and humanely. The other inmates should be loath to be a prisoner, thereby encouraging behavior that earns a right to some education and skills. Literacy, basic math and accounting, lifeskills and interpersonal skills and healthy coping mechanisms. then simulated job environments within the prisons. They cant be made to think they will walk out into a world waiting with open arms to hire them. They wont.
1
By all means, the basic idea of making prisons into educational institutions--not just offering a few courses--is great. Change the whole idea of what the institution is about.
But why does the author have to descend into the PC language of diversity, rights and moral responsibility? It seems that those in the academy are afraid to just say that something works--they have to add language that half the nation thinks is dangerous.
If you want to convince people who are not just like you, turn off the blather, please.
2
Awesome - now we won't have to import our cyber-criminals anymore.
I am definitely in favor of helping them complete high school. But college? I had to pay for my degrees.
5
Our prison system needs to be reformed...that's beyond question. But turning our prisons into colleges? That is mind boggling in it's absurdity...a proposal coming from of course a Harvard professor. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the worst ideas come from academia. So we are going to have a system where the law abiding have to pay for college while those who rob, rape and murder get it for free? Right! The day happens the crime rate will sky-rocket...why not? Too many kids leave school with over $240,000 in college debt. Right now there're more than 44 million borrowers with $1.3 trillion in student loan debt in the U.S. alone. This debt can't be discharged by bankruptcy. In fact it's the only debt that can't be discharged by bankruptcy...thank you Congress. Student loans are the closest thing we have to indentured servitude in America. Tuition costs at public and private colleges are and have been rising faster than just about anything in American society – health care, energy, even housing. Democrats who receive twice as much money from the education lobby as the GOP – like to see the river of free-flowing student loans. The upshot of all this is the government lends without fear, because its strong-arm collection powers dictate that one way or another, the money comes back. That's indefensible. To not even mention this fact in this column is unbelievable...especially for a "woke" academician. We have to solve the student loan crisis first while there's still time.
85
Best comment yet !
1
Mr. Brown -
You missed the point, which is to make certain that everyone receives the opportunity for equal education EARLY IN LIFE, thereby preventing the descent into poverty and crime. End of story. (And pardon, but your bias against educated people is showing...)
Why do we have to pick between having education accessible to people outside of prison and inside it? The answer is, we don't. We only need to stop cutting taxes for the rich and spending grotesque amounts of money on unneeded military capability.
2
A great idea that is already being carried out on a small scale. For those who have issues with cost, this can be addressed by just not locking so many people up in the first place. With the continuously increasing rates of incarceration. it looks like prison may not be as much of a deterrent as we think it is. Many of the people complaining about their "free speech" and "gun" rights are worried little about the fact that we are taking the second most fundamental right away from so many others. Prison should be reserved for people who are a serious danger to others if left in their communities unsupervised. Period. of course with the increase in for-profit prisons this isn't going to happen.
32
This is, without doubt, the most brilliant idea to surface in a decade!
It annoys me that I never thought of it myself.
Sure, if we are going to let people out of prison to live normal lives, they need to be trained and educated to fit in. Mental health care also would be useful for many of these folks. But, why not also put lots of money into giving people a better start in life, Why not pour money into mental health programs for young kids, to help those on the autism spectrum who lack money to pay for private care and for those kids whose family life may be filled with turmoil. What about pouring money into pre schools as well as elementary and high schools so that all kids would be competitive and have a chance to be the best of whatever that they can be. Of course, it would be nice if all children had the option to go to college or train for a profession without having to have parents with deep pockets or to get deeply into debt to pay for the college and training. But, I understand we have not only a prison system, but private prisons that must be kept busy, so the chances of pouring money into children's schools and health care to prevent problems and give them opportunities to succeed won't happen. A small chance exists to get them education in prisons. At least if prisons have education and mental health care options available, it will give folks a chance to get edicated if they cannot afford to be educated or to get health care outside prison. They can just commit a crime and get opportunities not available to them outside of jail.
28
Reform also has to involve a realignment of the priorities of those who have everything to gain by the current broken system, and everything to lose (in their view, anyway) by improving it.
In just about every example in which the full regulative capacities of the federal government are lacking, growth industries have taken over. These "industries" degrade and/or destroy the lives of those caught up in it while deeply resisting all attempts at reform or change. Examples include the VA, the health care system, the long-term care "system", and of course, the criminal justice system.
These are things that every other advanced society in the world view as a both a privilege as well as a responsibility of citizenship. In the U.S., they're profit-generating mechanisms.
Mass incarceration is a big business in this country. Prison contractors, vendors, administrators, "tough on crime" politicians and prosecutors, and the corrections unions that staff many of these prisons have deep vested interests in high incarceration levels.
This is why changing mass incarceration policies has to start with a shift in our societal mindset. As an example, the belief that health care is a right of citizenship and not a privilege of the wealthy was (is) ontologically prior to actually changing the existing health care system.
Likewise, recognizing that inmates are human beings deserving of decency and rights within the law is a pre-requisite for changing how they live within those laws.
1
definitely-mental health support and follow through required after release. Often inmates receive proper meds while incarcerated are released and do not have them, or are not encouraged to continue.
mental health treatment cannot possibly be overstated as a need, requirement to help most of the inmates. its just a fact. mental health first, education second.
How about a Marshall Plan for Education? Wouldn't that be the best investment we could make for the future of our country?
The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) based in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, definitely needs a mention by the authors of this otherwise worthwhile article. Incarcerated men and women participating in the program have proven to be 'college ready,' and they achieve a BA degree, not just High School diplomas or a GED.
So the deal is, if you are smart, and stay out of trouble with the law, you can go to college by incurring $100k in debt, which can never be discharged in bankruptcy. If you are a criminal, you get free college, healthcare, room and board, such as it is, while you serve your time. Leave with computer skills, debt free. I think we need to pay for everyone for the best college they can get admitted to, before college for prisoners.
4
Article makes no sense. So...someone who is serving a life sentence for murder all of a sudden is made to get their degree in criminal justice? Great article in the author's utopia. Higher education is a choice. It's a fantastic idea to make prisons like college, but how about we take this on in the elementary years before people choose to do bad things? Any teachers in West Virginia like to chime in here?
5
All prisons are colleges: prisoners learn how to become better criminals from other criminals.
Locals dump their criminals on the state, get them back a few years later and then scratch their heads in anguish about the high recidivism rate.
In Michigan we have a $2 billion state corrections budget, more than we spend on higher education, about $35,000 per year per prisoner on average.
We incarcerate at a rate about 6 times most other developed countries.
We haven't developed enough local alternatives to prison, it's so much easier to just dump them on the state.
The first few months of incarceration are the most painful for criminals due to their realization that they've lost nearly everything, after that prison is the new normal, just time. If revenge or punishment is the goal, then that can largely be accomplished in a much shorter time than we currently use for this purpose.
Michigan needs major criminal justice reform. So does the rest of country. We're spending way too much on corrections, we're not giving locals incentive to solve the problem and we're getting terrible results from the state system.
80
There is little incentive to spend less on corrections. With private prisons, courts fill them up--you know, the profit motive. These days everything is about money as if it were the highest value. Our humanity is going down the tubes.
Agree; I also wonder, what in your view is the meaning of the word "Corrections". How is this idea accomplished in prisons,? I would think that college education is the very best "correction" possible. Could it be tied to early release so that the huge costs you remind us of about can be reduced?
Most prisoners have a learning disability, usually dyslexia. If this condition had been caught early in school, we would have fewer prisoners.
"Most prisoners have a learning disability, usually dyslexia."
Sigh. But more than dyslexia, most prisoners probably come from homes with too many babies, no responsible father-figure who can channel their kids' energy productively and teach them manners and right from wrong, dependence on subsidies, and lack of interest in education or in showing up for work on time or at all.
Lots of kids have dyslexia, and we've been able to diagnose it for quite some time. Most of them refrain from breaking into cars, garages, and homes, or from robbing the elderly and the young, or from raping women and mutilating dogs, or from shooting their guns through the windows of nearby houses and murdering children.
It would be much cheaper to properly fund our schools before kids from "those" neighborhoods end up uneducated criminals. We don't do that because "our" schools might lose some funding. It's easier to blame the teachers and keep our money.
And just think of all the wandering Ph.D graduates who have nowhere to teach. They scratch out a living going from one campus to another, giving a course here and another there. They could be gainfully employed at the prisons and do well and do good at the same time -- a win/win for them, for the prisoners and for society at large.
1
I'm all for this. I think that, without a doubt, it would be by far the best option for inmates, their families and society as a whole. The research in support of this is overwhelming.
In order for it to work, though, Americans would have to put aside their deep-seated desire for 'revenge against the criminals.'
In other words, we have to change the mindset that too many Americans have that insists we should deny basic human rights and decency to people just because they are "criminals."
And - it has to be said - many inmates aren't guilty of anything other than being black, brown, broke, or in the wrong place at the wrong time.
136
That's the line right there - I "know" this - but still struggle to not "feel" it.
"Americans would have to put aside their deep-seated desire for 'revenge against the criminals.'
I am continually saddened by the "revenge against criminals" we see in this country. Supposedly, a large majority of Americans consider themselves "Christian." Do they ever listen to the Gospel or do they ever pay attention to The Lord's Prayer when they pray it? "Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors...if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" Mt. 6:12-15 passim. This is especially the case when people who committed crimes when young completely transform themselves in prison but are consistently denied parole by Parole Boards facing a barrage of letters against the granting of parole.
But many inmates are guilty of horrible crimes and have a high recidivism rate. If an innocent person gets victimized at a college by an inmate then reaction to this will be quite angry and Trumpian politics will grow stronger, so must have good selection. System has to take responsibility if an inmate escapes or harms a regular student.
What is missed in the purpose of higher education. It is not a club or a social program, so quit trying to make it so. Its purpose is to provide higher learning-- learning needed by society.
As stated in many comments, most of these prisoners have intellectual or behavior issues---many have both. Let not altruism blunt the reality that most are incarcerated for good reason. That reason, at the basic level, is for the protection of society.
We optimistically ignore the fact that half the population has below-average IQ, and have struggled since grade school. When higher learning is made available to all, standards will be lowered in effort to accommodate all. Someone inform Elizabeth. Oh, then tell Bernie.
2
And: an excellent source of meaningful employment for the many, highly qualified PhDs churned out to uncertain prospects by a university system that refuses to provide an equivalent number of stable academic positions for these well trained and committed scholars. Give them decently-compensated and relatively-secure jobs teaching (and researching) in prisons and, over time, their good work will change the world.
But there's the rub: what do you get when you add education to the manifest inequality, racism and brutality of the American carceral complex? Revolution, finally.
For the doubters of the benefits of higher education in prisons, I urge you to check out the film "Zero Percent." It is powerful enough to sway the most cynical among us. http://www.zeropercentfilm.com/
1
School suspension is a direct pathway for many kids into crime and prison. So turning the prison into mandatory school detention class with room & board could be one way to compensate for the sin of a failed school system and built-in racial discrimination. It is a high social price to pay, not just in dollars, but in dashed hopes, broken families, loss productivity, and higher crime rate.
1
I can understand the need for educational opportunities for prisoners but what about those students who have not committed crimes and are paying full board without any assistance from the government? They often incur years of debt and futures that look bleak. Maybe they could also get some financial assistance. We must not turn our backs on those who do not break the law.
222
I agree with you, but in context you are complaining about the multi-pronged attack on the middle class, educational institutions and the institution of education, and minorities by preference for punishment over help. This has been going on since Reagan began his successful attack on the California state university system and was carried forward through the political class nationally as they stripped financial resources away from most programs and institutions that favored the common good, moving them toward the military and upper classes. Until we fully recognize the overall situation, pointing out the inequity that seems apparent in your complaint merely pits one relatively disadvantaged group against the other while the overall picture remains the same or worsens.
2
I'm one of those students, WPLMMT. I'm in the final stages of my PhD. By the time I finish, I will owe $300,000 in federal student loan debt. I know dozens of doctors, engineers, lawyers and dentists who are in the exact same position that I am.
So it is with complete humility that I can say:
Yes, you are correct. Students like me need all the help they can get from the government.
If you really believe in it that fervently, though, then let it guide you the next time you step into a ballot box. It's never been easier to make a distinction between which political party cares about using government services to help deserving students, and which one cares nothing for anything that remotely smacks of intellectualism.
But why does it have to be an either/or between helping deserving students and doing what is right and decent for ALL of our citizens - including those within the criminal justice system?
It is NOT an either-or.
We can, and should, help both students and inmates simultaneously. Sounds too expensive, or far-fetched? It's neither. It's what every other advanced society in the world is doing, and has been doing, for decades now. It's why those societies don't have the kinds of societal ills associated with mass incarceration that are a regular feature of American life. And why those societies are steadily advancing ahead of, and beyond, the U.S.
Those societies have simply chosen to reject the hate demagoguery that guides so much of America's policies now.
4
How could anyone disagree with what you say? However, as we all know, our country has lots of problems and twisted priorities where we'd rather spend our money. However, the fact that we don't give enough financial support to our students and the families who may be supporting those students, does not negate the fact that we must do more to ensure that prisoners, once re-released right back into our neighborhoods, can CONTRIBUTE to these same neighborhoods, versus be a DANGER to them. And while it's indeed a disgrace....the costs of higher education in this country....the greater danger is in having neighborhoods filled with unemployable ex-cons, fatherless families (because the dads get thrown back in prison, again, because our society afforded them no job opps, no counseling, no true support, etc.) And many of these people started out in the prison system, due to petty crimes. They weren't 'bad people' per se, but once they get in our illustrious for-profit prison system, and then are let back out, now with a 'record', no job opps, etc. ..... well, it's a downward spiral from there. And all thanks to the fact that, it seems, that's exactly how we'd prefer it to be.
I understand emotionally why the idea of free college for inmates offends people struggling to pay tuition for their own kids. But this is an issue that needs spreadsheet-clear thinking about issues such as:
What are the costs of college-in-prison?
What are the expected costs of future crimes with and without college?
How many inmates are prepared for college?
I am a prison volunteer in the Midwest. Some of the highlights of my experiences: directing the first-ever performance of Coriolanus done by prisoners, as well as scenes from Much Ado about Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream; conducting weeklong seminars on Shakespeare plays in Kentucky; conducting workshops on short story writer Toni Cade Bambara and poet Mari Evans for incarcerated women in Illinois. Indiana used to have college programs in its prisons until they were abolished by the current president of Purdue University, former governor Mitch Daniels.
2
The entire idea behind prisons is to change behaviors. That is learning. However, who will pay? Are we to the point now that inmates have access to more opportunities than lawful citizens? Sounds like more Ivy League unicorns speak.
2
Great idea. I'm not sure how far this would go with republicans at the helm but who knows.
Our author writes:
"... then the purpose of prison education shouldn’t be about training people to develop marketable skills for the global economy. Instead, learning gives us a different understanding of ourselves and the world around us, and it provides us tools to become more empathetic."
That used to be understood as the purpose of ALL higher education, it is only recently that our universities have been re-imagined as vocational schools.
Now I get it - the prisoners won't be offered STEM courses, it will all be about courses in poetry, philosophy, languages, and so on.
What an innovative idea : take all the humanities PhDs who can't get a job, and send them to prison!
"These universities recognize that they have a moral responsibility to pursue educational justice for prisoners, a group that has disproportionately attended under-resourced public schools."
It would be even better if their primary function wasn't to producing a endless flow of mega criminals who run the corporations, the political institutions and the military.
4
My college does outreach work with local jails and prisons, and that's fine, as long as I'm not required to take part. I certainly am not prepared to teach violent criminals the joys of poetry, nor are my tuition-paying college students prepared to sit in class with violent criminals. And we shouldn't have to deal with that dynamic.
As someone with endless student loan debt from my own successful education, and a clean police record, I am entirely uninterested in funding "free" college for convicted criminals. How about we work on helping productive, law-abiding citizens like myself to get out from under crushing student loans first?
1
I once worked in a Prison Education Department (Librarian)
Not possible; Some significant portion (20%? 40%?) of the inmate population is functionally illiterate; Many of the rest can barely deal with Louis L'Amour. Just training those guys to the level where they can pass the GED is a struggle.
Yes, there are incarcerated individuals who would benefit from the opportunity to do college level work, and society should make that possible.
But "College for Everyone" has enough problems on the outside, which we urgently need to address (Student Debt!). Let's work on incarcerating fewer people in the first place.
3
I don't mean to disparage the idea- I support reforming our prison system- but will the future be a world in which the only way young people can afford a college education is to go to prison?
While waiting to go inside the Green Haven Correctional Institution to see a client, I chatted with a professor entering to teach a class to prisoners. Something like the history of medieval astronomy. (I know, some will pooh-pooh this... I would say, what a fascinating topic!)
The professor was from Bard College. He told me his prison students were much more focused and attentive than his "regular" college students, who were quite distracted by other things.
Why wasn't the Bard Prison Initiative mentioned in this great article?
1
The value of Professor Hinton's suggestion should be obvious, but our society tends to treat lawbreakers as outcasts, whose offenses deprive them of any right to decent treatment on our part. So we stash them in hellholes, then release them back into the outside world, still hobbled by restrictions on their ability to get a job and lead a constructive life. After all this, we declare ourselves shocked, shocked that so many of them wind up back in prison.
We could improve this miserable record if, as many European countries do, we regarded inmates as members of the community whose behavior required their temporary removal from society. If we treated them as resources who retained the potential to contribute to our economy and society, then most of them would respond positively to incentives that enabled them to fulfill that potential.
This has nothing to do with sentimentality. This country spends an enormous amount of money on mass incarceration, without striking at the roots of crime. While some inmates would defy any efforts to rehabilitate them, common sense and all the empirical evidence collected by experts demonstrate that such people form a small part of the prison population.
If our country truly regarded education as an investment rather than a cost, moreover, we would spend more wisely on schools, reducing the number of inmates in the first place. It is cheaper to prevent a problem than to cope with it after it has developed.
264
Yes, we must change our penny wise pound foolish culture so that we invest in our most valuable resource: humans.
Punishment has its place. But it is only one tool out of many, and one of the least effective at getting maximum productivity from people much, less making people happy.
1
I do think that rehabilitation is more important than punishment. However, if you examine the people in prisons and how they can be reasonably expected to behave, the problems with achieving true rehabilitation becomes clear.
People who end up in prison are failures for any number of reasons. Many have substance abuse problems. Many suffer from neuroses which cause them to act without regard to consequences. Some are sociopaths who enjoy having power over others and will likely never become law abiding citizens—they consider them to be silly fools. Some of them regret having been caught, not what they did to others. These are hard cases whose recidivism is likely. Efforts to change them are likely to fail. But the proportion of those who do change their lives is large and since the number in prison is so large, rehabilitation efforts are well worth it.
Providing behavioral counseling and educational opportunities should be made available to any who will seriously try to benefit.
2
That last paragraph is quite the magic wand. Don't think reality works so readily. Concentrating on a strong family structure might be a better place to start--still the best predictor of academic success.
2
Last summer I had the privilege of touring San Quentin. It was an amazing experience. Yes, public funds are being spent to educate prisoners, but there are also 3,000 volunteers every month who pitch in to help. I saw men who were incredibly grateful for the chance to turn their lives around.
It's funny to me that conservatives, who have worked so hard to cut back public education, are resentful of the opportunity to reduce recidivism and help men, many of whom never had a chance on the outside. I, too, would like to see higher education made affordable for everyone, but that doesn't mean we can't afford to help prisoners as well. There is so much breast-beating about making Americans safe. What could be more useful to our safety than to give men hope and skills in order to reduce crime?
1
I speak from experience, having spent time in a federal prison. I became a teacher in the unit's limited educational offering. I say limited because the warden at my prison had absolutely no interest in it. So any emphasis on learning and education was from others like me.
I spent part of my time interviewing fellow inmates to try to find some correlation between background and crime. And education is the overwhelming common denominator. The average inmate seeking a GED equivalent had only reached seventh grade.
After my experience, there is no doubt in my mind that the prisons are fertile territory for continued education, be it technical, vocational or a college degree. The problem is that until this becomes a focal issue in the DOJ and the Bureau of Prisons it is and will remain a non issue.
The USA has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners. And in theory at least, incarceration is three pronged; 1, to incarcerate me to protect you from me, 2, to rehabilitate me and 3, to punish me for my crime. In the cases of non violent crime the length of my sentence should then be no longer than the time it takes to rehabilitate me. And education is a proven faster route to rehabilitation.
Improving inmate education could lower incarceration time thus reducing prison population, overcrowding and cost. Unfortunately, the current theory of the BOP is that inmate humiliation and degradation, and not education, is the easier path forward.
6
I think it would benefit both inmates and society to put inmates though required classes in psychology and civics so they can be exposed to ideas on understanding the self, self control and be given the encouragement to think about the type of society they want to live in. I'm not talking about political education, but self awareness and self improvement. Only after they have a basic understanding of themselves and their society will they have a chance to fit in. I'm also not talking about a prepaid college education, but awareness training.
2
After we have made higher education affordable for those who behave decently, we might assess what resources were left over for programs of this nature. Last time that I checked we had not yet accomplished the first.
23
I have mixed feeling about it. I am all for education. I think maybe we need to think about student loan relief or changing some lending laws before we pay to educate our prisoners that cant get decent college level jobs because they have felonies on their record. If we cant give decent hard working Americans a free education, why in the world would we be able to afford to educate some prisoners? Should someone that murdered someone in my family get a free college education paid for by my tax dollars while my paycheck gets garnished for student loans that I can not afford? The should they be able to compete for jobs with me? I think it creates the wrong idea. Do a crime and then go to college free. How about free college and you get a good job and wont need to commit crime and do prison time.
10
By my senior year, my college had turned into a prison; so, I suppose turnabout is fair play.
4
A good start but what is critical is for each incarcerated person to deal with their Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE's) In dealing with what should have been dealt with long before the crime that was committed is dealt with in the time the person is incarcerated it will be time well spent. HEALING MUST go on in prisons and as we know there is very little of that going on, Peace
Two books worth reading Chapters 10 and 11 of Why They Kill by Richard Rhodes and The Deepest Well by Dr Nadine Burke Harris.
3
I completely agree. I have volunteered since 2003 in our local women's prison - in addition to being a retired health care provider (having worked in a child abuse intervention clinic for 20 of those years). Almost all of the women I hold deep conversations with reveal a level of traumatic childhoods that put their ACE scores very high. Trauma-informed therapy needs to be available - along with inspiring college classes when the inmate has figured a few personal things out and is ready to move ahead.
1
Al If you have not read the books they will blow your socks off. Then what to do with the knowledge to get change. Trauma informed care is progress but still not resolving /healing the abuse/trauma that is the foundation for the "criminal" behavior!
Cart before the horse? Imagine if we made good free education available to all who could make use of it BEFORE they became criminal, and were incarcerated.
I am always amazed by fiscal conservatives who do not understand that you can invest $20K a year in schooling, or $0K a year in jailing. Which is the better bang for the buck? And all we hear in small-town America is the "burden" of our taxes.
I am proud to pay my taxes ..."I buy civilization" ! (Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes)
9
typo; Should read: $40K a year in jailing....
1
And who pays for this education? On the outside people have to pay and so should those on the inside.
7
Germany has done this for decades with superb results. They spend far less than we do on prisons. 60 Minutes has done stories on it. Google it.
10
That 60 Minutes story on German prisons was a revelation. We could be spending so much more wisely on our prisoners, with better outcomes and less cost to society. I am beginning to think we address every problem in this country in the worst possible way. I am so tired of feeling that way.it’s all the for-the-most-profit motivation.
Exactly. I just saw the 60 Minutes piece this past Sunday. Along with extensive educational training, the prisoners are deeply interviewed by experts when they enter so that their issues are better understood and dealt with appropriately. The recidivism rates in Germany are unbelievably low.
And of course, Germany has fantastic educational and health benefits for the entire population - they make America look like something out of the stone age. Just a coincidence - America has the worst trade balance on the planet, and Germany has the best. We can learn a LOT from the Germans.
And liberals wonder why they keep losing elections! Law-abiding kids of downwardly mobile middle class parents have to rack up tens of thousands of dollars in crushing debt, but prisoners will get a free ride to a college education. I'd love to go back to school for another graduate degree. How about I stipulate I committed a crime so I can stroll the university-like prison grounds and learn about climate science or poetry? I assume there be time-off for Spring Break and Friday night keggers before the big game on Saturday.
17
What if this actually cost less than the for-profit penalsystem we have now, that fails so miserably?
What a great idea. Use the time they're spending there in a productive way.
How ironic. Just about the time that colleges/high schools/elementary schools become prisons, prisons become colleges.
What's that mean? I guess the cheapest way to get a college education will be to drop out of school, commit a crime that lands you in prison, and get your free education there.
5
I taught in the Wisconsin program (PREP) that brought college courses to inmates at both the men's and women's prisons. The students ranged from excellent to bored - just as in the outside world, but the majority were diligent, thoughtful, and very self aware. I was sorry when the program was terminated, as recidivism is indeed reduced by education. Yes, it was odd having your briefcase searched going in and out, but it was a worthy effort.
34
Great idea. Affordable education for all is, in fact, a nation security issue. Without it this nation will fail.
27
1. Technical schools? yes.
2. Colleges? Yes
and, see "Contemplative Mind in Society" - contemplative centers -
the problem is really not the prison. The problem is people like the commenter who said we should make the prisons even worse - and then (either lying or clueless) asserted that it is actually the violent inhuman conditions in prisons that are responsible for the decline in crime in the US - as if the much lower crime rates around the world, with far far lower incarceration rates - oh, why bother, people like that are immune to reason.
9
I am a product of the prison system, I received my G.E.D. in 1985, and they had college professors teaching classes at Western Penn. I took classes while incarcerated and it prepared me for society. When I came home I continued going to Pitt and received my BA in 1992. While in Western Penn college turned my life around. I got a better job as I received my degree, I went back to school again and got my MSW. I have run different programs and projects. I was brought up in the gang era in Philly, which is all I knew, but being able to go to school and learn about life and another way has paid off dividends for me. It gave me a second chance, as a result of that second chance I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh now. Programs especially educational programs, technical programs for men and women incarcerated can do a world of good. People make mistakes, and for those of us who learn from our mistakes a second chance to make good is very fruitful. I am behind the need for education in prisons, and I only hope more men and women take advantage of it. Men teach these classes who have vision of creating a better society, and change the thought process of the streets. I support these type of programs because it enable me to be a leader I am today.
To a commentor who lamented his taxes being used for such programs--
Your taxes are already being spent on a system that does little good for society and makes it more likely that people leaving prison will have no ability to do anything productive when they get out.
Leading to more bad situations and more crime.
Why not realize that we can do good for our country by doing something helpful for the individuals who live in the country?
Incarcerated people have gone wrong for many reasons - probably because of bad poverty, hard knocks, their Iives just weren't valued and they never fit in. (Because of bad breaks and bad choices).
Better to help them with a second chance than begrudge the money spent to do that. It's a better use of taxes than endless incarnation.
It's far more expensive to warehouse people in prison than for them to be working, tax paying, productive, even happy members of their neighborhood.
Right?
Think big hearted.
Not small minded.
It's actually cost effective.
88
A perfectly sensible explanation that might be possible in a world where humans behave like the "rational actors" economists use when creating models. But try selling this to the parents whose child cannot afford college, or has a crushing debt load because of it, while they read about inmates being trained for careers. The notion of a greater good being served is likely to fall on deaf ears, regardless of it's ultimate wisdom.
Commendable as this proposal is, there are political barriers supported by corporate prison services that have to be overcome. Many prisons, particularly in the South, are outsourced to companies with horrific track records. Many state prisons are rich and free sources of unskilled labor for rural local governments. However, one can sense a changing of attitudes that seems receptive to the benefits of improving a human being as opposed to ruining that person. As a former college instructor, I learned early on what the gift of hope could do for a receptive mind. Maybe this is an idea whose time has come.
18
How about educating kids in schools first. Perhaps then they won’t turn to crime. Let’s be proactive not reactive. This is another reward for bad behavior in the first place.
9
I have first-hand experience with a program of this type. Believe me, these programs benefit society as a whole by reducing recidivism, improving prison safety, and cultivating potential members of the workforce, to name just a few. Incarceration punishes inmates in numerous, profound ways, such as separating prisoners from their support network and removing their personal autonomy. Education programs are a win-win for society and the prisoner. Better education certainly would reduce the incarceration rate, but there will always be prisoners and this article examines a fruitful way to confront that fact. Failing to cultivate the great potential of prisoners punishes us as well of them, all to no good end.
3
There's an O. Henry story - The Cop and the Anthem. It takes place in the beginning of the 20th Century in New York City. On a frosty morning, a harbinger of the approaching winter, a homeless man looks for shelter for the upcoming season. Jail is the best place he can think of and the story consists of his efforts to get arrested.
I envision an episode of Black Mirror which adapts the story to the Trump era. A youth can't afford to go to college, etc. (I should copyright this, shouldn't I?)
2
Well, it's kind of like a slap in the face to all the honest, hard-working people who are struggling to get out from under their college debt. Yes, much of the crime in this country could be reduced with education, Yes, help the prisoners get their high school diplomas, but a college degree? How about first investing in decent living conditions for the poor, giving them a life that may discourage much of the crime in the first place? How about helping to pay off some of the college loans rather than advertising free education for those who commit crimes. Like healthcare and pollution, it seems we lack enough foresight to spend time and money preventing the problems before they happen.
7
Our prisons are staffed by minimum wage level corrections officials, uneducated, and unqualified to supervise, much less set the tone in a place of incarceration. And yet they do.
We spend upwards of $30,000 a year per prisoner. At that price, prisons should be staffed with qualified individuals. To work in a prison, an employee should show proven interest, and have taken 2 years of coursework, and have the ability to pass a competitive civil service exam.
The for-profit prison industry is invested in recidivism, quite literally. They fund candidates who push for longer sentences and less leniency. Any member of congress who receives such money deserves public humiliation.
We should be focused on how to turn prisons around. Anything which educates, enlightens, changes, or betters the odds of a crime free life in the future, should be welcomed.
I volunteer in prison teaching reading. Even though my city has a 7% African American population, 40% of the guys I work with are black. From poor neighborhoods, bad schools, burdened at an early age by the stresses and insecurities of poverty. All are intelligent. None of them should have failed high school, but they did.
Along with the initiatives suggested in this piece, we should fund free schooling for any American, at any age, to return to school and begin again, wherever they need to start, to eventually graduate with a high school diploma.
42
"...we should fund free schooling for any American, at any age, to return to school and begin again, wherever they need to start, to eventually graduate with a high school diploma." Or even college! Some places do just that. I left high school after my junior year. Ten years later, in the mid-sixties, I was encouraged by a Miami-Dade Community College registrar to take a humanities course for credit. When I told her I had no high school diploma, she informed me of the school's "open enrollment program" for people over 21 wherein if one could maintain a C average for a certain number of courses, the high school requirement was waived. Well, that invigorating college climate and some help through National Defense Student Loans lit my fire! Numerous evening classes - part-time -- straight A's - on to Barry University for an MSW summa cum laude - have more than paid society back with my taxes over these many grateful years. I may not have been a promising investment, but I was a good one and am certain I'm not alone. Forever thanks to that unnamed registrar and to Dr. Peter Masiko, MDCC President - whom I understand was responsible for the open door.
Eric, It is kind of difficult to get PhDs to work in an environment where they are assaulted on a daily basis while making a few dollars over minimum wage.
No doubt there may be one-off examples, like Malcolm X, who was a bright star from the get-go, who would and will benefit from college like prison opportunities that the writer proposes. Undoubtedly the peeps who trek to the jails will emerge feeling much better about themselves, thinking they made a difference, with better outcomes for the inmates. One wonders, of course, whether there have been any follow-up studies of inmates so situated.
The fact of the matter is that many if not most of our inmates are hardly ready to do college-level work and would be better served, not by Harvard trained educators, but by adult literacy professionals, and, here's the rub, in the inculcation, if possible at this late date, of bourgeois, middle-class values, that would allow them to succeed once they have served their sentences.
4
heyomania
You misapprehend the issue.
Middle class values, such as they are in this Gomorrah of pathological individualism and worship of the cash, are the problem.
Take your average Drug Lord: they do that drug thing, get that money, then what? Pay the rent, buy the Beemer, score the clothes and home theater and lobster every night. Have kids and put them through the weak excuse for schools we allow them. Solid middle class. Just like us: hungry, afraid, unsupported by their country, eager to be premo consumers.
Or your average well respected executive. He does nothing different. Except maybe go to the corner office and spend the day denying care to other well respected people in medical need, collude with drug (sorry, pharmaceutical) companies to cheat the government, force hospitals to prescribe his drug of choice or refuse payment. It's a racket, it takes lives every day.
You, and other commenters, make a rational argument "Why reward bad behavior? It offends moral people like me. It gives the flood of lazy, grasping Americans, who are nothing like me, an incentive to lounge in luxury on the massive government benefits we dole out like Halloween candy."
Like the Harvard boy who screws up all over the place, gets into school on daddy's donation, and discovers the beauty of science, history, or (bleh) economics his senior year, these inmates are finally having their moment. We ought to encourage them. It'll make things better for all of us, even you.
Of course this should happen. But the cost should be paid through better public funding of the incarcerating agencies. Not the colleges. Where the government contracts for private prisons, this should be part of the deal. Already, health care in prisons is contracted out to for-profit multistate corporations. Deprivation of instruction in a job skill while incarcerated should be deemed an infringement of Eighth Amendment rights.
11
Taxpayers fund it, regardless. And while I don't oppose this idea, I have priorities for my tax money, and I'd put free tuition for everybody at state colleges all before I spent money on free college just for criminals. At any rate, I'd advise you to stay out of prison, you will be disappointed in the services offered, and the rights granted. It's not what you think.
1
Making education available to prisoners is certainly an admirable goal. If you have the resources, you might as well try. The program would be hard to administer though. Most of the people I know with a prison record weren't exactly interested in college even when they had the intellect for it. As in Malcolm X's case, I think funneling the right people to the right resources will present a challenge.
There's another odd possibility here too though. Imagine a widely successful prison education program. The program is exceeding all expectations and every standard metric for successful outcomes. Wouldn't students want to go to prison for school?
If you offered me a free college degree from Harvard in exchange for a few years of personal liberty, I would seriously consider the offer. The problem is we already have a program like that. The military offers education in exchange for service. Instead of enlisting though, I would be committing a crime in order to receive a benefit. I guess you could say a successful prison education system rewards bad behavior.
The question then becomes a debate on the purpose of prison. Is prison punishment or rehabilitation? I'm not sure you can ever win that argument one way or the other. That's why we currently have a mix of both.
5
Add Bucknell to the list of universities with such programs. I have colleagues who teach courses at a women's prison nearby in rural PA, but with an innovative twist--half the students in the class are "inside" students (i.e., inmates), and half are "outside," or Bucknell students. From all indications, these are powerfully transformative experiences for all involved.
44
I supervise a Adult Ed program. We know from our own studies that if a person gets a HS credential (GED or Diploma) that they get more hours at work and if they get a post-secondary credential that recidivism goes down and paths to sustainable work and the middle class open up. In MN prisons, offenders are required to obtain and are paid to go to GED courses before working in industry.
It would be great if people could earn post-secondary credentials in prison on a regular basis. But the main barriers are that a great number of persons in our population with a HS Diploma or GED are not ready for college and need remedial coursework and finding funding streams to pay for post-secondary education. Many persons who enter jail and prisons with HS Diplomas are TABE (Test of Adult Basic Education) are tested and score out at the 6-7th grade reading levels and less at math. They have done just seat time in HS, completed a Special Ed diploma or did the GED prior to 2014 when it was not as rigorous. They do not have the academic skills to enter college until taking more Adult Education classes. The workforce educational opportunities offered in jails and prisons are much less than in the public. And all of the prison/jail programs have to compete for time, space and resources. Which programs should be emphasized, CBT (cognitive behavior therapy), treatment or education? Education is great, but it is just one piece of the puzzle.
27
As a teacher who has worked in many venues, including prisons, I support this idea entirely.
In the age of Trump, good luck with it.
57
Didn't spot Obama rushing to support this either.
2
Already backed by various study results and, irrespective of the various government moves to act tough against the criminals, the need to provide education/vocational training doesn't wanes. Not only will such a move reduce recidivism but will also result in a better assimilation of the prisoners into the society after the completion of their term.
8
Something strange has happened to Americans. We say we value liberty as a country, but have forgotten that it is the denial of liberty that is the punishment for crime.
Instead, we heap indignities, brutality and loss of rights after release on top of the loss of liberty. We've turned prisons into punishment machines and for some even torture chambers.
The entire prison industrial complex needs to change. I fully agree that extensive educational programs are a must. Also, any corporation that "employs" prison labor should only be allowed to do so on condition that they be willing to hire the men and women who successfully worked for them on the inside. If they can do the job on the inside, they should be hired to do the same job once released.
This would provide inmates with a combination of education and job skills, the two things that were too often missing from their lives and that led them to criminal behavior. It's past time to break this cycle.
50
...."...we heap indignities, brutality and loss of rights..."i agree, EXCEPT if your rich. Another injustice.
With my taxpayer money? When I have to worry about paying for my kids’ s college and saving for my retirement!
26
By spending money on such prison programs now, in the long run we would save money: shorter incarcerations, less spending on social services & welfare, and more productive people.
But, in the short term, it would cost us money. I personally think it is a good investment for the future.
45
I think, even in the short run, educating inmates saves taxpayer dollars when the recidivism rate drops by 43 percent. (It costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 to keep someone in prison for a year.) Education in prison as well as other corrections reforms could save us all a bundle.
5
His kids are even better investments, having never committed a crime. I’m in favor of educating prisoners, but I’m even more in favor of removing all our college loan debt with federal dollars. And I’m a boomer, with no college debt, whose kids have no college debt.
7
Great idea. Let's have education available in prisons. While we're at it, let's have education available at colleges, and by available I mean affordable to state residents without going into debt. People should not have to be thrown in prison to be able to get an education.
311
How about healthcare, too!
2
What about using the many college campuses that are closing, or near closing, as educational based prisons for non violent and/or low risk inmates?
All too many small colleges throughout America are in financial trouble or already closed and could be converted and used to turn prison into a "time out" for correction and not a dead end for life.
Yeah, and when Bernie Sanders said "free medical care," he refused to provide financial plans for this theories. Meanwhile, Vermont defeated his single-payer theory.
Ms. Hinton has also not provided any financial plans for her theories.
Also what to do violent offenders, e.g., rapists, murderers, assaulters of single mothers.
1
Why not use community colleges for this? There are already small programs up and running that could be expanded. A two year degree will give prisoners access to jobs, certificate programs, tech schools, and a transfer to a reasonably priced state college. But granting prisoners the privilege of taking courses and getting degrees from an Ivy league institution is absurd. Give more grants to students who have not made a string of terrible decisions. There are plenty of deserving students who have the ability but not the money to go to a top university. Let's reel in those halos and take care of deserving students FIRST. And while we're at it, let's reinstate remediation in math, reading, and writing because that's also what poor and underprivileged students NEED to get through college.
15
In Connecticut we have already enlisted community colleges in our efforts to rehabilitate inmates through education.
1
And the community colleges already have armed guards and teachers! ;)
1
This great idea will be opposed by Republicans. They believe in vindictive punishment, not rehabilitation. Moreover all those for-profit private prisons the GOP loves would never allow such activities. Professors snooping around looking at prison conditions, talking to prisoners about their treatment? Never in a million years.
43
I am not affiliated with any political organization, however, I’d rather not have my hard earned tax payer money go to the education felons and criminals, when I have to take students loans to pay for my kid’s education.
5
Sounds like a great idea! Glad Obama made these changes and hope they continue. Our prisons are an abysmal failure of waste, inefficiency and long term waste of human potential in a country which prides itself on free market efficiencies. Governor Schwarzenegger tried to get a law passed that the state of California could never spend more on prisons than education. The state went from spending 2x on education vs. prisons in the 70's to the opposite 40 years later. The War on Drugs led to this resulting change in funding priorities among other changes.
7
Oh my God, kckrause, shut up about Obama already!!!
Have you not been watching? If there's a program you want support, a race you want to treat fairly, a great idea you want to promote, the mention of Obama is enough to set orange hair aflame, Justice Department (so-called) lawyers writing abusive briefs, and funding cancelled, to be replaced by fines and fees, and conservative obstruction.
Just, please, keep it under your hat. At least until 2020.
1
Let's also make these educational opportunities available to the guards and other prison workers who often have not had such opportunities in their own lives.
207
"Let's also make these educational opportunities available to the guards"
Well, I wonder if any of the guards are educational material. From what I understand, most of them are hired for such jobs based on their lack of any real abilities, except the ability to be sadistic. I good number of them are as mentally sick as president Trump.
Talk about the very poor being handed a monumental incentive to shoot someone non-lethally. 5-10 with free college-level education. Get out as a PhD in finance, a CPA and become a Final-Four accountant, starting at $80,000-$100,000 per year (and free dental). With luck, you begin your REAL career still in your twenties. Those left behind, or merely working-class, MIGHT post a complaint.
The sheer VOLUME of blood escaping from a bleeding heart could drown whole communities.
I have no idea what the percentage might be, but SOME rather high percentage of the incarcerated probably have room-temperature IQs and would be incapable of exploiting the results of such attempted social reengineering. Some of them are stone killers, and most Americans probably would just as soon see them rot for the rest of their lives, and not purchase the middle-class house next-door when they get out.
START with effective education at the primary and secondary school levels, far more widely-accessible than what is supportable by funding based largely on property values, in order to benefit ALL Americans, not just those who served as wheelmen in armed bank heists or shot kids on the Southside of Chicago in gang drive-bys.
We should be DISincentivizing serious prison time.
36
Yes Richard some people in prison are stone cold killers and educational programs would be wasted on them. The key word however is some. Others just need a chance at a better life and having an education would allow them that chance.
Releasing someone from prison without providing them with a chance to gain skills that they could use to reintegrate with society is our failure. Prison isn't just supposed to punish it's also supposed to reform. Any investment that lowers reincarnation rates is worth considering in a healthy democracy.
93
We have the highest incarceration rate in the 'civilized' world. How's that working for us? I support the idea of returning those who can be returned to society in a manner that does not lead straight back to prison. It's common sense but that doesn't seem to get through to the law and order crowd.
83
Chris W:
Some would argue that since we intensified our incarcerations, what we've gained are violent crime rates that have taken nose-dives for decades. Not a trivial thing.
10
I think it is exactly what out to be done, and not just offered - it should be required. Prisons tend to turn people loose with no chance at re-entering society with a fair chance at having much of a life or in many cases, even a job. We need to radically rethink rehabilitation such that it actually produces educated people with new insights and useful skill sets and hopefully, a different outlook on life.
A similar approach should be taken to addressing the major problem of inner-city poverty and all of its generation to generation ill effects. That is a vast amount of untapped human potential. With the right focus and resources, real change could be achieved with huge benefits to all.
12
This is an old idea in the criminal justice system. Education was always part of a larger attempt at rehabiliatation, rather than just punishment and incarceration. But that logic all died during the "get tough on crime" days during the Reagan Administration.
Most criminal justice professionals will tell you that the propensity for criminal activity declines as criminals age; particularly after the age of 25. That said, providing ex-felons with an education always was a great return on that investment because it allows for a much smoother transition back into society, thereby keeping the propensity for crime low.
Good to see this getting some much needed attention again.
62
St. Ron may be gone from this earthly plane, but his spirit lives on in the rock-hard hearts of Conservatives who can't see past their noses.
1
Hey, free room, board & tuition! What's not to like? Pity the poor suckers who took out college loans when they could have just stuck up a bank.
49
In Massachusetts we're already spending $56,000 per year per inmate. Let's use our tax money to invest in people who are incarcerated not give them a PhD in crime.
3
Which is why progressives like Bernie Sanders believe in free college for all. A first step to a better educated America.
We pay for prison either way Village Idiot. Education will help many to move past criminal behavior. I pity people who think doing something good for someone else and giving them a chance is a bad thing.
2
As a retired computer science and mathematics professional, I looked for ways to volunteer to tutor inmates at our local prisons and absolutely could not find a way to help out. It is a real shame.
136
Have you tried helping parolees to get engaged in online learning? Might be an option for you. There are a huge number of formerly incarcerated people who could benefit from free online learning.
You should find the prisons in your state that have college in prison programming. To teach in prison, you work as an adjunct of the university that serves that particular prison. If you contact the college and let them know you are interested, and you meet their qualifications and they are looking for teachers with your skill set, you are in. But it sounds as if your area is more remedial, more of a pre-college. Normally, graduates of the educational programming who are still in prison handle that work for their pre-college students. In that case, look for organizations like Hudson Link (in Ossining, NY) who work with newly released students. You can help them with career and resume work. Many of these men and women have no computer skills and no idea how to create an effective resume. They need your help.
Excellent article. We need to address how we think of those of us who have run afoul of law enforcement before we can make any meaningful change. We have to recognize the the incarcerated are still members of our society. We have to let go of our insistence on punishment and revenge. We need to return people to the streets who can function as full-fledged citizens.
13
The life-changing potential could be endless. I am retired now, but I taught at the junior high, high school, and college levels. Decades ago, an older cousin of mine taught barbering in a prison in Montgomery, and I always admired his "bravery." He claimed he felt safe inside the prison classroom, and he believed he did some actual good in the world. It seemed to me he did.
I would gladly return to the classroom to teach motivated, older students. And think of the employment possibilities! In today's financially stultified academic environment, universities would rather pay the very low salaries of TA's (teaching assistants) than the actual living wages of professors. My theory as to why colleges do this is so they can hire more bureaucratic personnel. As a result, qualified college teachers are notoriously under-employed and under-paid. What a boon turning prisons into colleges could be.
39
How about turning them into technical schools, where they could learn skills like auto mechanics, bookkeeping, carpentry, chef skills, computer skills, dental technicians, electrical, landscaping, nursing, plumbing, etc. jobs needed in the broader market, learned quicker than a long college degrees.
162
Germany has a great neo-apprentice system(it teaches most everything and is a work and study with pay program, no goldbricking.) that keeps its unemployment rate at effectively zero with grads having waiting jobs as soon as they complete, that is a great reality. It gets people BEFORE they get caught up in the penal system. A well employed person making livable wages is rarely a threat to society.
Another thing that hinders good opportunity for prisoners is prisons for hire, these places want maximum occupancy in their beds.
3
"How about turning them into technical schools"
Do you realize that a number of prisoners already have college and university degrees? And based on findings and the law of averages are innocent of any crime. Prisons are a business and the judges are sales department, profiting from taxpayer's money! This is the very reason the US with about 5 percent of the world population have 25 percent of it's prisoners, where in this evaluation includes brutal dictatorships like China. This will continue for as long as the voters vote in politicians who works for millionaires and large corporations, including the prison industry.