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 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell 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.