Is there a relationship between education and correctional facilities?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what my grandkids will have to do to be successful. They are lucky to have been born in America. They have college-educated parents. They have broad adult interaction in their lives in that we are a close family with a ratio of adults to children of 2 to 1. Their parents own their homes, and their parents are good citizens who value information and education.

AI will have a major impact on many of us as it emerges and replaces professions right and left. Kids today will have to be more flexible when earning money than previous generations when they are ready to launch. They will have to learn skills I can’t imagine, but that may come easily to them as they are native computer and internet users.

Changing careers is hard, but for those of us who plan to work well into our seventies, having the flexibility to change is great. I can’t imagine working for 50 or more years doing the same work. It seems uninteresting, and as a mature person, I value different things than when I was younger. I no longer view my profession as a definition of who I am and I work towards increasing my knowledge and contributing differently than I used to.

I was considering the challenge public schools face with budgets. Recently the public school system in a neighboring city had a teachers strike. It was a challenging time for everyone involved, and it went on for several weeks. The teachers wanted more pay, understandably. The parents wanted their kids back in school, understandably. Kids needed to be in school, Oregon is way behind other states in catching up on missed education during COVID-19.

I’ve always felt that if we want to have a successful outcome for all of our populations in America we should focus on a few areas of social spending. Healthcare, child care, pre-k thru high school education, and some publicly funded college education, or trade school. You may wonder why I feel comfortable spending public funds on social programs like health care and education. I think I would rather my neighbor has all the opportunity to thrive that I’ve had, and I’d rather fund healthcare, childcare, and education versus jails and prisons.

You may wonder how I came up with this connection. I’ve always had a sense that jailing people is not a good use of public funds if we can circumvent incarceration with the support I’ve listed. Of course, there are people who must be incarcerated, but there are many people who sit in jails or prisons for low-level crimes they may never have committed if only they had the advantage of hope that some people have as part of their day-to-day lives.

In America, the average cost to educate a student is about $12,000 annually, versus the cost to imprison an inmate which costs just under $32,000 annually. The overall expenditure for education is greater because there are more kids than prisoners. There are about 49 million students whereas there are about 1.9 million prisoners and nearly 3 million people on parole.

I’m no genius, but even I can see that between the cost to incarcerate and the cost to monitor people on parole that can add up, and I argue this cost can be reduced significantly if only we had the will to address the causes of incarceration.

I always think about how to save money. One way to consider how money, time, and effort are saved is by looking to our elders and their proverbs. “A stitch in time saves nine.” If we can decide we prefer to prevent crime through good living, I think we can do this. But we must be motivated. Therefore I’m providing some statistics, knowing that nothing motivates more than statistics. Or as my spouse says, on average 80% of statistics are wrong. Ha.

High school dropouts are 3.5 times more likely to be incarcerated and are 63% more likely to be incarcerated than a person with a four-year degree. Prisoners who obtain education while incarcerated are 43% less likely to become incarcerated again.

Imagine a kid who is being raised by a single mom. That’s pretty easy to do; most of us have a person in our life who is a single parent. Now imagine this mom lives in a community that offers child care at low or no cost. This mom can work, and provide food, and shelter for her kid.  Her child is part of the education system from a young age. She knows how to navigate school programs and peers. She knows how to work with teachers. When she arrives at pre-k, she’s ready for the show and tell. She thrives.

After a while, the mother is able to take online classes at night, for free, so she can change where and how she works. It’s hard and takes a long time but she gets a two-year degree and finds a job as a diagnostic medical sonographer. Her kid is doing well in school, she is well-liked by her teachers and peers, and she is learning to read and do the math. She is in an afterschool child care program that is funded through taxes in her community.

The parent continues to work and earn, building up funds over time to put a down payment on a house, she doesn’t have to save money for college, she knows her daughter has the option of attending a two-year college, a four-year college, or a technical college once she completes high school because it's paid for by the community. Hope makes the mom and the kid perform well at work and school because they know they can thrive.

They live in a neighborhood that is working class. They don’t worry too much about crime; crime is low because the community invested in healthcare and education. In fact, the community spent little on prisons, because crime is down and incarceration is rare.

In Oregon, where I live, the cost per student annually is $11,000. The cost to house a prisoner is $44,000 annually. Of course, there are more students than prisoners, but if we support people and reduce the prison population we could save $44,000 per year per prisoner and some of that money could be used for educational support.

Why don’t we choose to fund schools over prisons? It seems complicated but I think there are several things that come into the conversation.

·       People feel afraid and don’t want dangerous people hanging around.

·       Politicians are invested in for-profit prisons.

· For-profit prisons exist to earn money, not to rehabilitate prisoners.

·       People have attitudes about public spending, for example, they don’t feel as though they should pay for others to thrive.

·       People imagine there is a class of people who routinely “take advantage” of social programs and they don’t want to support a program rife with corruption of the masses.

This is my counter to the arguments presented above-

·       A person in America is much more likely to be killed by someone they know. Stranger danger is a concern, but not as concerning as the person who you live with.

·        If we had rehabilitation versus prisons, people would be better at recovering from their time out. Instead, we have a system that is encouraged monetarily to keep people incarcerated. Politicians who are invested in for-profit prisons want to see a big return on their investment.

·       Having your neighbor thrive means keeping your doors unlocked, and not worrying about getting carjacked. It means having nice things for many, not just a select few.

·       Some people will “take advantage” but by and large people just want to survive. In areas where a basic universal income has been tested, the recipients have done remarkably well, even with small amounts of income provided.

·       By far the amount of suffering caused by white-collar corruption is greater than the corruption of a few people who “take advantage”. Just look at Enron ,  Bernie Madoff, and the global financial crisis of 2007-2008.

Finally from my own experience, taking advantage of the Affordable Care Act meant I could pursue avenues that I would not have been able to because I was tied to jobs that offered health insurance. Imagine a world of kids who grow up with the hope education, healthcare, and affordable childcare can provide. Not everyone will be an innovator, but we don’t need everyone to be an innovator, we need the truly brilliant to innovate. Innovation drives the economy and that’s a good thing. Strong economies provide good-paying jobs. Strong economies can easily afford excellent educational opportunities, affordable child care, and healthcare.

For the people who imagine a person “taking advantage” of a program designed to educate, provide healthcare, or affordable childcare, I think that is more a reflection of their corrupt thinking than the reality of a healthy society.