Most people don’t think of education when they think of prison. They think of punishment, lack of freedom and loss of rights. They think of the old adage that crime doesn’t pay, which is true, especially if you are a Louisiana taxpayer.
Our state has 39,683 adult prisoners, with about half in state prisons and half in local jails. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in America, adjusted for population.
This is expensive for two reasons. First, it costs taxpayers about $15,000 a year to incarcerate an inmate. Second, many of our prisoners are repeat offenders: 50 [percent] of the 15,000 prisoners released, on average, each year commit another crime and return to prison within five years.
Some people, of course, need to be in jail. They deserve it, and society is entitled to demand they be put and remain there. Others, however, could live productively in society after serving their time if they had the proper skills, the most important of which is education. Unfortunately, the average Louisiana inmate has a fifth grade education and little or no vocational training. When he gets out of prison, he can’t find a job, so he returns to a life of crime and winds up right back in prison.
We know that crime and illiteracy correlate, so why don’t we do something about it? Other states have.
Georgia, for example, has made passing the General Educational Development (GED) test a priority for its inmates, after finding that the attainment of a GED reduced recidivism rates by 29% over three years.
After analyzing 18,414 inmates released from its prisons, the Florida Department of Corrections concluded that inmates who earned a GED while in prison were 8.7% less likely to recidivate than those who did not complete a GED.
New York has also been aggressive in offering high school equivalency diplomas in its jails. A recent study concluded that of 16,302 releases, 1,141 fewer of the inmates that earned their diplomas returned to jail within three years than the inmates who did not earn a GED while incarcerated.
A reduction in recidivism can mean real savings for taxpayers. A U.S. Department of Education study of 3,600 prisoners in Maryland, Minnesota and Ohio found that every $1 spent on correctional education saved $1.98 in prison costs.
To be fair, Louisiana state prisons and many local jails have prison-based education programs, but they need to be a greater priority. Allen Correctional Center, for example, has a capacity of 1,461 state inmates, but in 2010 only 28 completed their GED. Avoyelles Correctional Center has a capacity of 1,564 inmates, but in 2010 only 48 completed their GED. Winn Correctional Center had 59 GED graduates in 2010 out of a capacity of 1,461. Moreover, over the past four years, the state has reduced prison education dollars more than 20%, and our local jails never even had enough money for prison education to begin with.
This makes no sense. The state is being penny wise and pound foolish. Experience in other states proves that correctional education works. It reduces crime and recidivism, which in turn save taxpayer money and make our state safer. (And that doesn’t even count the monetary savings of crimes avoided; crime costs the American people $450 billion annually in property losses, medical costs, lost earnings, social program costs, pain, suffering and reduced quality of life.)
In short, Louisiana needs a new rule: If you are a Louisiana prisoner (in a state prison or local jail) who is not cognitively impaired and who does not have a high school diploma, you will not be eligible for parole until you complete your GED. Alternatively, the GED requirement could be made voluntary; a prisoner could be given an appropriate amount of sentence credit for GED coursework completed while incarcerated.
The new law does not have to be expensive. Many other state prisons are using technology-based educational tools and affordable multimedia computer software, delivered on state surplus hardware, to teach prisoners and allow them to learn at their own individual pace. The GED Academy (www.passged.com), for instance, is an online GED prep program that costs $189 per person. And that’s before the volume discount we would ask for.
The average Louisiana prisoner serves 4.78 years. Let’s help them put that time to use earning a GED. We will all be better off.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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But, after reading this through and thinking about it, this sounds very reasonable. Around 5%-10% of prisoners would get their GED, which sounds about right. The price of the online GED program sounds about right. If the "passged.com" program is reputable, this is actually a good idea.
And, it could be measured and re-evaluated after running the program for a year or two to be sure it's effective. Measurable results.
I wish all government spending were justified with short, clear and thoughtful analysis like this. If it can't be justified like this, it should be eliminated.