Save Taxpayers ' Money On The Correctional Education Program

Improved Essays
Save Taxpayers ' Money in the Correctional Education Program
In a developed country like the US, every tax revenue should be used carefully and usefully to make sure that parts of the taxpayers ' efforts do not waste on unnecessary things. Thus, when President Obama decided to extend the Pell Grant Program, which provides student aids to eligible inmates to take college courses while in prison (Kerr, 2015), politicians and taxpayers split into two groups. The opposing group argued that the correction department should focus on existing re-entry programs, and use taxpayer 's money on other need worthy funding. In contrast, supporters listed out several notable benefits of the program to not only the inmates and the society as a whole, but also for taxpayers who are currently financing the program. Indeed, some long term effects—lower recidivism rate, provide inmates with a new life with more opportunities and make the society a safer place—are crucial. In addition, it really saves taxpayer 's money in the long run. On average, New Yorkers pay about $60,000 per inmate per year (The Editorial Board, 2016), a significant amount of money that approximately equal to the yearly salary of a middle class business man. In addition, US by far has the highest incarceration rate than any of the industrialized nation in the world (Kaplan, 2014). What infers is that most of the tax revenue is used in those existing re-entry programs as supports to the US prison system. However, studies

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