The Education of Prisoners The overpopulation in prisons is growing drastically and will still grow over the next few years. Most of the prisoners are young adults, who while serving their sentence, are no longer given the right to pursue their university education. Due to the high number of prisoners, the lack of education results in an increase in levels of illiteracy and lack of technical skills between inmates. Hence, it increases the rate of frustration and anger leading to more violence in prison. One of the main reasons offenders turn to a life of crime is the lack of education. Therefore, in order to decrease the number of future prisoners, the authorities should control the high probability of current prisoners re-offending once
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With violent and angry personalities, prisoners often tend to pick up fights with other inmates as a way of self-relief. Education will shift their minds from violence and turn their attention towards other more functional methods to express themselves. They would be using means such as art and literature to express their emotions and release the anger within. By doing so, the inmates will be introduced to a more civilized world, different from that of crime. Additionally, education helps enhance the prisoners’ critical thinking by turning their street smart into a form of analysis. Glenn Martin, head of the reform groups Just Leadership USA, attended college while serving his sentence in New York prisons stated and I quote: "what a college degree did for me was [also] to recalibrate my own moral compass and help me better understand why I was facing all those barriers to the labor market, the stigma I was facing... I was able to analyze my situation in a much much more complex way." (Chen, 2015, page 2) Education for him wasn't just about gaining knowledge and a degree, it helped reform his way of thinking and turn him into a functional member of society. He never offended again and ended up being one of the greatest advocates of education for prisoners and a major reformist of the …show more content…
Reducing recidivism will also decrease the financial costs that it causes. According to the Pew research report of 2011, in the United States, the yearly budget to provide living essentials for prisoners was over $70 billion dollars. After introducing educational programs inside the prison, the state of Texas has saved roughly $95 million dollars and the state of California has saved about $233 million dollars. Therefore, by lowering the probability of inmates re-offending once released, the state has saved 12$ for every 1$ spent. (Zoukis, 2015, chapter 1, page 8). Over the past few years, prisons experienced an increase in the budget spent on criminal corrections since the growing number of prisoners requires capacity expansions and building new facilities. Therefore, the reduction of prisoners will have a great impact on the financial improvement of prisons and eventually shifting the money spent on expansions to rehabilitation programs. As mentioned earlier, the education offers offenders the opportunity to obtain a job and decrease crimes and will eventually shape a better life in their society. However, each offender is engraved with a print called the criminal justice footprint which is a statement of the offense in the criminal record. This footprint causes difficulties since the offenders feels that they are not
With violent and angry personalities, prisoners often tend to pick up fights with other inmates as a way of self-relief. Education will shift their minds from violence and turn their attention towards other more functional methods to express themselves. They would be using means such as art and literature to express their emotions and release the anger within. By doing so, the inmates will be introduced to a more civilized world, different from that of crime. Additionally, education helps enhance the prisoners’ critical thinking by turning their street smart into a form of analysis. Glenn Martin, head of the reform groups Just Leadership USA, attended college while serving his sentence in New York prisons stated and I quote: "what a college degree did for me was [also] to recalibrate my own moral compass and help me better understand why I was facing all those barriers to the labor market, the stigma I was facing... I was able to analyze my situation in a much much more complex way." (Chen, 2015, page 2) Education for him wasn't just about gaining knowledge and a degree, it helped reform his way of thinking and turn him into a functional member of society. He never offended again and ended up being one of the greatest advocates of education for prisoners and a major reformist of the …show more content…
Reducing recidivism will also decrease the financial costs that it causes. According to the Pew research report of 2011, in the United States, the yearly budget to provide living essentials for prisoners was over $70 billion dollars. After introducing educational programs inside the prison, the state of Texas has saved roughly $95 million dollars and the state of California has saved about $233 million dollars. Therefore, by lowering the probability of inmates re-offending once released, the state has saved 12$ for every 1$ spent. (Zoukis, 2015, chapter 1, page 8). Over the past few years, prisons experienced an increase in the budget spent on criminal corrections since the growing number of prisoners requires capacity expansions and building new facilities. Therefore, the reduction of prisoners will have a great impact on the financial improvement of prisons and eventually shifting the money spent on expansions to rehabilitation programs. As mentioned earlier, the education offers offenders the opportunity to obtain a job and decrease crimes and will eventually shape a better life in their society. However, each offender is engraved with a print called the criminal justice footprint which is a statement of the offense in the criminal record. This footprint causes difficulties since the offenders feels that they are not