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Prison education

Obama administration’s plan to fund college courses for inmates is sound

The central fact about incarceration is that, in all but a handful of cases, people sent to prison will someday be released. What happens then could well be determined by what they learned in their time behind bars.

As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, the Obama administration hopes to influence that by funding college courses for inmates. The idea is that by giving convicts more education, they can be better equipped to re-enter the world and become productive members of society.

What is proposed is a pilot program that would involve relatively little money and be conducted over three to five years. The idea is to use Pell Grants to pay colleges and universities to offer courses in prisons. Pell Grants cover up to $5,775 per year in education expenses.

This would be done under a provision of the Higher Education Act of 1965 that allows the administration to waive rules for experimental programs. The rule to be waived is a 1994 law that prohibits inmates in state or federal prisons from getting Pell grants.

That has some members of Congress upset. Arguing that federal education money should go to law-abiding families struggling to pay college costs, one congressman has said he will introduce the “Kids Before Cons Act” to block the program.

It would be better to let the experiment play out. Inmates could use Pell Grants for education before 1994, and several studies have shown lower rates of recidivism for inmates who participated in prison education programs. Those studies were few and small, however. In the words of an Urban Institute report, the evidence is “promising, but not conclusive.”

But with a problem as big as recidivism – and as costly both in human and monetary terms – “promising” is enough to keep trying. A study released last year by the Bureau of Justice tracked more than 400,000 prisoners from 30 states who were released in 2005. It found that more than 76 percent were re-arrested within five years, more than half of whom were re-arrested in the first year after being released.

That is “re-arrested” not “re-imprisoned,” and the study did not track what offense was involved. One thing in evaluating the education program might be firmer data all around.

The hope, of course, is that inmates will figure out that prison is not someplace they want to be and that they should not do things that could get them sent back. Too often, though, the effect is more like graduate school for crime and brutality.

Education may not cure that. It may not do much for a violent felon being released after years in prison. But it might do more for young, first-time offenders. And it may enlighten some inmates to the idea that they may not want to live like that. For others, it could offer hope with some of the other problems they will encounter outside – starting with making a living honestly.

Incarcerating criminals has several objectives, and punishment is one of them. But if the inmate is one of the majority who will get out in a few years, it is in society’s interest to try to make that person someone we can live with. Education can be part of that.



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