Comments on Prisons vs. Colleges

• Free Lunch
• Posted by Absent Referent on February 29, 2008 at 7:15am EST

• I suspect there's a correlation between this shift to spending more for "corrections" relative to education and what David K. Johnston discusses in his book _Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You with the Bill_.

  There has been a steady transfer of wealth from the poor, the near poor, and the middle class over the last 30 years due to all manner of big business-favorable policies. This pressures more people toward the underground economy. That in turn enriches a private sector that's invested more and more into the for-profit prison-industrial complex. That in turn encourages still more social policies (including de-funding education at all levels). It further
  populates prisons and stokes a growing criminal "justice" system.

  All this is related to the "back to basics" bare bones notion of education as that--and only that--which will produce skillful automatons in the workplace. The situation is an outcome of late-20th- and early 21rst c. policy. Once there's been an outcome like this the myth of "equality of opportunity" rings hollow. People either resort to the underground economy or they organize politically.

  This last can be staved off by starving education and imposing standardized tests, "accountability," etc. as defined by the self-same policy makers (in some sense the real criminals) who brought this on in the first place. Those with the actual free lunch are often keenest to remind the society from which they've legally stolen that there's no such thing as a free lunch.

• Pitiful, Disgusting Policy
• Posted by Phil on February 29, 2008 at 9:20am EST

• I can say that in Michigan the increasing corrections numbers were helped along greatly by 12 years of John Engler, a particularly vile and self-serving governor who saw prison building as an economic development engine for the depressed rural communities of Michigan.

  He ensured that corrections policy fed increasing numbers into the prison system and appointed throngs of constructionist throw-away-the-key ideologues as judges.

  Now, those "good prison jobs" that legislators support through the gravy train of state monies flowing to their districts are fast privatizing and reducing benefits to their workers.

  It's a pernicious system. We seem to be stuck in hell for a long time to come, for many reasons. This higher education vs. corrections ratio really encapsulates the depths of our backassed destructive policy world.

• You go Phil
• Posted by Martin on February 29, 2008 at 10:00am EST

• I have to agree with Phil, although I am not quite as bitter about the situation as he is. Working in Higher Education for the first time in Michigan this year, I am getting a crash course in some of the strange ways of this state. Having said that however, I love Michigan. There are many good things happening here and if we can get the economic changes in place, I feel this state can become a model for Education vs economy vs prison reform.

• A Canard
• Posted by Prof. Challenger on February 29, 2008 at 10:55am EST

• Comparing spending on college vs. prison is silly. The costs aren't comparable: housing lawbreakers, many of them violent, involves quite different activities (and costs) than helping ambitious young people to meet their educational goals. Just because people spend more on gasoline than they do on water doesn't mean their priorities are misplaced. And the implied notion that, if we just sent more people to college then there'd be less crime -- that's a canard, too. College attendance is more an indicator of motives and values, rather than a shaper of it.

• Posted by dcp on February 29, 2008 at 10:55am EST

• Am I missing something here? Inasmuch as state colleges have the ability to raise additional funding through tuition and other sources and correctional systems do not, shouldn't we expect over time to see such trends, particularly as state legislatures grapple with the funding challenges presented by health care, the environment and other public policy areas?

• Posted by TRM on February 29, 2008 at 12:00pm EST

• Comparing college spending with prison spending is not silly at all. But it may be enlightening to change the terms of the debate.

  How about "accountability" for the prison systems and their employees? If taxpayers can demand better and more measurable results from colleges and universitites, why can't we demand them from prisons as well, especially given their exponential increases in cost? Why don't we develop a punishment-and-reward funding system, modeled after No Child Left Behind, that would hold prisons to account for reducing crime rates and recidivism?

  And if we can force colleges to cut spending or raise tuition by reducing state funding (based on the notion that education is not a social good but rather a commodity to be purchased by individuals for their own, rather than society's, benefit) why can't we apply the same logic to the prison system and those it "serves." If crime victims want perpetrators locked up, why can't they foot a bigger share of the bill?

  (And I shouldn't really need to say this, but this post is intended as satire, in the tradition of Jonathaan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." Blog readers who interpret this post literally should do so at their own risk.)

• Higher education vs. incarceration
• Posted by Jack Olson on February 29, 2008 at 12:00pm EST

• Why has the number of violent offenders in state prisons tripled since 1980? Why has the number of felons convicted of property crimes doubled? (source: U.S. Dept of Justice)

  Because the voters wanted it that way. They either voted for judges who assessed longer sentences, or legislators who enacted mandatory sentences, or served on juries which assessed longer sentences. Remember California's Proposition 184, the "three strikes" law? It passed by a landslide, approved by 76% of the voters.

  And the result? Depends on who you ask. The same people who claimed that longer sentences would not reduce crime now deny that they have. The same people who claimed that longer sentences would reduce crime claim that they did. The only clear fact is that crime, especially violent crime, has declined now that murderers, rapists, burglars and armed robbers are getting longer sentences.

  It is clear that law enforcement has gotten better, whether that is due to more spending on police (including private security service) or longer sentences. I ask you, can higher education show a similar improvement for the tripling of college expenses over the same period? That is to say, for instance, that where a year of education at a public four-year college cost $3,859 in 1985 it cost $12,108 in 2005, or approximately a threefold increase (Information Please almanac). Are the college graduates of 2005 better educated than those of 1985? There is no clear evidence of that. Spending on higher education is up, not only through the inflation of college expenses but also since 40% more students attend (Census Bureau) than 20 years ago.

  So if you think the average voter is being either stingy or penny-wise, pound-foolish by funding longer incarceration especially for violent criminals, while in your opinion stinting higher education, remember three facts. First, he is more concerned about public safety than public higher education, regarding the former as a necessity and the latter as a luxury. Second, people who go to college tend to come from families with above average incomes, so you're asking him to subsidize the education of people wealthier than himself. Finally, while law enforcement can show a reduction in crime during the years of greater spending on it, higher education can scarcely show any improvement for the increasing sums of money which have been spent on it.

• Numbers vs. policy
• Posted by fecalito on February 29, 2008 at 12:00pm EST

• State support for higher education continues to decrease in proportion to total costs. Numerically, such a continuing trend has predictable effects on these ratios.

  Increased state support for early childhood education certainly offers the promise of deflecting the trajectory of some into the prison queue towards the fulfillment of higher education. Such policy choices will be influenced profoundly by the actions of the electorate in November.

• Posted by David on February 29, 2008 at 12:00pm EST

• It seems odd that no one mentions recidivism in their comments. Teaching criminals to read, write, balance their checkbook, and in some cases give them a two-year college degree, has proven success in reducing recidivism by large percentages. It is far less expensive to educate a criminal so they can provide for themselves legally rather than returning them to the only thing they know, criminal activity. Without education they re-appear in the prison system again and again. Check the numbers, recidivism is markedly reduced when the subject has the tools necessary to provide legally for themselves. Now if we could only accomplish this before they appear the first time!

• Colleges can be prisons too..
• Posted by Eliott on February 29, 2008 at 12:20pm EST

• Comparing prison attendance and college attendance is rather dumb and worse if you try to develop policy on the logic involved.

  Unsavory social activity is all too popular and prevalent and sometimes it requires that certain behavior be isolated. The tendency to allow miscreants to stay within a free society results in some bizarre activity.

  Judges have long sentenced lesser criminals to college attendance. This is already happening. Colleges are also being used for much social rehabilitation, self awareness, social readjustment, drug rehab, family development, attitude adjustment, disability benefit, medical benefit adjustment, court mediation, mental accommodation therapy and so forth.

  The connections are already there but trying to shift one population to the realm of the other could have further deleterious results on both. I suppose it all depends on your own background, training and education.

  HELP!

• I don't think it's silly at all
• Posted by Utahprof on February 29, 2008 at 1:35pm EST

• yesterday CNN reported that fully 1 % of our population is imprisoned. We imprison more per capita than any other nation.

  True, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We think lock 'em up and throw away the key policies work.

  As an aside, had I taken a different job, I could have made extra money teaching inmates at a local correctional facility

• This Is Waaaay Too Complex For Me
• Posted by Frizbane Manley on February 29, 2008 at 2:05pm EST

• Obviously Scott has chosen one of the dozens of aspects of this survey (and the subsequent report) on which he could have commented. I hope everyone who reads and contributes to InsideHigherEd will read and reflect upon this particular Pew Charitable Trust study.

  http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/One%20in%20100.pdf

  During this interminable period of intense political activity, candidates are “allowed” to go only so far in criticizing the United States ... otherwise they are thought to be too negative about America to serve as its president. Thank god I’m not running for anything and can freely say there is something very seriously wrong with a society that incarcerates as many of its citizens – and especially as many of it young people -- as we do.

  For the most part the Pew study focused attention on the nature of incarceration and how it might be changed to benefit society. What it did not do is make the connections between the root causes of incarceration and their relationships to education, poverty, the economy, social class, opportunity ... all of the things that are supposed to, but clearly do not, make America great.

  I am willing to accept the admonition of the stand-up-for-America, super-patriotic Pollyannas in our midst – and they are legion – but any educator amongst us who does not love education simply because it affords hir the opportunity to confront the problems (and opportunities) touched upon by this study – and, indeed, assume responsibility for them -- should just get out of the business.

  I realize teachers can only do so much as individuals (see

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_and_Deliver).

  Their efficiency and effectiveness is dependent upon – and can be greatly magnified by – exceptional leaders who formulate and implement comprehensive, societally beneficial policies. Yet, we have a government of “leaders” who are stupid about foreign relations, stupid about defense and military force, stupid about the economy, stupid about our immediate and global environments, stupid about government and governing, stupid about social and racial equality, and, sadly, stupid about education. And we put them there. What does that say about us?

  Most of the readers of IHE are either educators or otherwise have a remarkable concern about education. I can assure you of one thing ... we cannot make even the slightest headway in addressing our stupidity and starting on the very long journey to being the society we claim to be – but clearly are not – until such time as we recognize that it all starts with education ... with knowing ... with thinking ... with reasoning ... with embracing knowledge.

  I’m guessing that, as things stand now, we citizens of America are not unlike our own mathematics students ... by any reasonable standard our greatness is in serious doubt, but when it comes to “self-esteem” we have no match anywhere in the world.

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101701298.html

  Even if you don’t pursue any of the URLs I included above, I hope you will check out all of the ads in the URL below ... frankly, watching them brings tears to my eyes.

  http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1370867857/bclid1378319585/bctid1344569752

• Posted by JBM on February 29, 2008 at 2:15pm EST

• Prof. Challenger and Eliot have it correct. At best, it is completely meaningless to compare such disparate aspects of any economy. At its worst, it perniciously stokes ignorance of basic economic principles to politically manipulate the emotional and unaware.

• Posted by Truth on February 29, 2008 at 3:30pm EST

• As a society we should be moving back in time when it comes to our prison system. State and federal prisons should be built in a fashion similar to WWII era military barracks. Cheap wooden barracks, with the prison surrounded by razor wire, guard towers and such. Unlike the way things are now, criminals should actually repay their debt to society. We should bring back chain gangs to farm their own food, dig ditches, clean up and fight fires in our state and federal parks, etc. Violence in prisons would go down, since the inmates would be too tired at night after working all day to fight over nothing. We could pay our guards a lot nicer wage, and we probably could take a lot of money and resources that would need to be directed to building and operating prisons and redirect it to education or any other programs we would like. Criminals have been ruining everything and costing us too much for far too long. It is time for our good citizens to stand up and say that we are tired of it and something must be done.

• Silly is not taking the comparison seriously...
• Posted by R.F on February 29, 2008 at 3:35pm EST

• The old saying that it takes three generations to move someone off of Public assistance applies to the incarcerated and their actions as well.

  Certainly just attending a college course will not turn a felon into a saint...and that is not the point. Education is a foundation that must be layed if we are to make a dent in the large numbers of citizens in prison. In today's society continuous education is ever more important and the incarcerated are left further and further behind.

  The latest research seems to indicate that criminal behavior is more prevalent among family members suggesting that a model that merges social work with education to intervene into the lives of the poor may have some results.

  Colleges do not employ nearly enough social workers, nor do they have the number and types of supports that a newly released prisoner will need to be successful. Community colleges in my opinion come the closest to meeting this need, but it is something that all colleges could stand to improve.

  Just as reform to the welfare system had to take into account that you can't just move someone from welfare to work without all of the support systems in place, so the "correctional' system must change as well.

  Without the effort to raise the standard for our poor, which must include education, we will only see this problem grow worse.

• To Truth: A Question
• Posted by Absenet Referent on February 29, 2008 at 4:45pm EST

• "Criminals have been ruining everything and costing us too much for far too long."

  Which criminals? The kinds we lock up or the ones that go on running the world? I say, given the way our economy works, we owe a debt to criminal activity: high and low. Here's why:

  What if we could wave a magic wand and somehow, all underground economic activity ceased? No matter what one's background or inducement to sell drugs, immigrate illegally, burglarize, rob banks, fence stolen goods, launder money, steal IDs, the list goes on, each individual criminal found him/herself psychologically blocked from seeking ill-gotten gains? Let's just say all this misbehavior suddenly stopped.

  What would happen to the so-called legitimate economy, Wall Street and all?

  Frizbane Manley is disgusted with our society because we seem to produce so much prison fodder. Maybe one question to ask is this: What is it about the way our economy works that creates a need to incarcerate 1 out of every 100 adults (disproportionately represented, by the way, by Blacks and Latinos)?

  I submit that, were all that money not circulating up from the underground economy (a part of the economy that helps hide the true unemployment picture), together with the increased market for goods and services trying to counteract it (police, prison guards, everything from burglar bars to high tech security systems), the economy as a whole would crash.

  We're addicted to crime. At all levels. And the real crime has to do with the increasing distance between the super rich and the super poor in the farthest outposts of the U.S. empire. Don't accuse me of wanting to penalize "the achievers." You know, there's always the danger that an informed citizen might dare question what the achievers are achieving.

  To Frizbane: I'm with you on this. Yet why do we keep electing stupid officials? C'mon, do the people really generate their own candidates? Or do we merely ratify what the liberal and conservative wings of the ruling class tell us to ratify? Putin heavy or Putin lite.

  We need to rethink and research these issues in some radically new ways. We need to stop asking the same old questions and think of some advanced questions. We won't be able to if we assume that Tim Russert is doing a thorough job of expounding the issues.

  Why, for example, can people go to the university and obtain an MBA. Where are the MLOs (Masters of Labor Organizing)? It suggests the true limits of our democracy.

• Posted by Tired Adjunct on March 1, 2008 at 8:20am EST

• Is everyone in academe mathematically illiterate? This comparison between spending on higher education and spending on prisons has no real meaning. What argument is trying to be made here? Is it that whenever any segment of public spending increases, spending on higher education should increase at an equal or greater amount? And that this should be true even though spending on higher education has already been steadily outstripping the rate of inflation for decades?

• State Prison and College Partnerships / Collaboration
• Posted by Robert McCulley , Director Northeast Regional Center for Vision Education at University of Massachusetts Boston on March 1, 2008 at 10:45am EST

• Instead of being concerened by competition of state resources (University vs Prison)we would do best examine ways to collaborate and integrate University resources and programs that will serve to improve community initiatives before during and after incarceration.

  By expanding the role of universities: its faculty and graduate student resources, we build a strong social justice experience for our graduate students and decrease the cost of such programs in the community.

• Send some Prison Monies to Universities
• Posted by Phillip , Educator on March 1, 2008 at 8:50pm EST

• I agree with McCully. Some of those prison resources could be going to a university lead program to reduce recidivism. Many ex-cons face the problem of limited job skills and being an excon when returned to society. They can't find a job and so return to their former money making ways. Turn the management of a prison unit (and the accompanying funding) over to a university led program.

• I just Love Academics
• Posted by Frizbane Manley on March 2, 2008 at 4:05pm EST

• The recent posts by Robert McCulley and Phillip take the cake. I especially like the idea of putting more educators in prisons (as part of their “management” teams) for the purpose of solving this problem.

  As long as we’re taking a simplistic approach to this quite unacceptable and probably unnecessary problem (see Frizbane Manley above), here’s my “solution.”

  1. Within the next twenty years, let’s gradually reduce the size of our “higher” education system by 40%, and let’s reduce our financial support of the same by 50%.

  2. Within the next ten years, let’s increase our investment in occupational education ten-fold and move the locus of that education away from university settings to community settings.

  3. Within the next fifteen years – and independent of our investment in occupational education -- let’s double our investment in community college education. Let’s move everything that claims to be related to “life-long learning” away from large state and regional universities to small communities. Of course that includes almost all liberal arts education.

  4. Oh yes, within the next five years, let’s disassociate all NCAA Division 1 universities from their intercollegiate football and basketball programs, and let those farm teams survive by virtue of being underwritten by the NFL, the NBA, and “alumni” who have no socially redeemable purposes for investing their resources.

  While some of my best – and certainly my most entertaining – friends are economists, I have always thought their guiding paradigm that we are nothing more than homo-economicus practicing the pig principle was simple-minded, intellectually indefensible, and logically absurd. Nevertheless, I do believe that reallocating our resources in accordance with the “formulas” outlined above will create a “market” that will greatly improve the status quo ... and, oh yes, decrease the amount we feel compelled to invest in law enforcement and incarceration.

  While some of my best – yet least interesting – friends teach business management, I have always thought their guiding paradigms ... oops, they don’t have any guiding paradigms, do they? I suppose I should not expect the managers amongst us to be able to use their seat-of-the-skirt, flavor-of-the-month strategies to solve this problem within the next three quarters.

  Because, as some, no doubt, Eastern mystic once said, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” I think I’ll let my first step be bubbling a bottle of Johnny Walker Red this afternoon to celebrate the fact that someone other than George W. Bush will be at the helm in just 323 days.

  http://www.bushslastday.com/

  And while I’m bubbling the bottle, I’ll utter a prayer of thanksgiving that March Madness starts in a matter of days and by then I will surely have returned to my senses.

• Government's Priorities - Not Surprised
• Posted by college graduate on March 3, 2008 at 4:30am EST

• The PDF file is crashing my browser, so I can only assume this report is talking about public spending through state governments, and not the total higher education industry (including private tuition & charitable spending) inside the states.

  I just hope that the total of all spending on higher education (including the free market) is higher than all spending on prisons. It would not surprise me one bit if the government's priority was prisons over schools, but I would be pretty surprised if the free market preferred jails over colleges.

• From the mouth of an inmate....
• Posted by Laura on March 7, 2008 at 5:15am EST

• During rounds as a corrections officer, my husband greeted an inmate with the cliche "Be cool, stay in school." To which the inmate replied, "If I had done that, I wouldn't be here."

  It is a matter of common sense to most everyone, including inmates, that we need to spend more of our tax dollars on education than corrections.

• Prison and Education
• Posted by Ms. Lady , Site Manager Indiana State Prison at Ball State University on March 7, 2008 at 1:15pm EST

• I work in a maximum security prison for men where the offenders can attend college to obtain either an Associate or a Bachelor degree and I can speak strongly for the positive effects of higher education. Some of my students call me "Miss Lady" and daily let me know how much they appreciate my efforts to bring them an education. Prisons currently act as warehouses for the incarcerated and are getting larger and more sophisticated all the time. The prison system industry is already unwieldy and getting worse while going virtually unregulated. I strongly urge citizens to look into the "criminal justice" system and see what you think. Why are schools and colleges assessed on the quality of their graduates, while prisons are considered successful when their "graduates" return? Recidivism is a key measurement for the success of our prisons, but even that measurement is in the hands of the departments of correction because the numbers depend on how the statistics are developed. I recommended that we greatly increase our scrutiny of how the justice system currently spends the money we give them. Those of you who think this is irrelevant have obviously not investigated the scope of corrections in the state budgets.
  Miss Lady

• prison vs colleges
• Posted by sameer , planet7 at planet7 on May 12, 2009 at 1:30pm EDT

• There were 41 black men enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, according to the Black Star Project; 1.4 percent of the student body.

   

  That same year, there were 1,183 black men imprisoned at the Illinois River Correctional Center; 60 percent of that prison's population.

   

  And so it goes: 115 black men enrolled at Bradley University (1.9 percent); 1,093 imprisoned at the Danville Correctional Center (60 percent). 321 black men enrolled at Northwestern University (1.7 percent); 1,207 imprisoned at Western Illinois Correctional Center (60 percent).

  "After 30 years of rising enrollments, the low number of black students applying to and enrolling in American colleges and universities is shocking," "While this does not bode well for black students attending college today, it predicts an absolutely disastrous future in the next 10- to 20-years for the black community. Instead of more black doctors, lawyers, educators, accountants, business managers, technologists, social workers, and engineers, the black community will have more government dependent, unskilled and unemployed workers. This current educational meltdown will have a catastrophic effect on the black community."
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  mike
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