Introduction:  

 

Greetings.  David asked me to introduce myself.  That’s a bit of a
challenge.  Should I talk about my astrological sign, my weird hobbies, and
my hopes for mankind?  Perhaps I had better keep this conversation related
to correctional education and save those other topics for the happy hour at
the next conference.  

 <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
/>

I’ve been privileged to have opportunities to work with prisoner education
for quite some number of years – starting as a prison based teacher and then
doing a lot of prison school administration work – all in the State of
Maryland.  For most of my career, the prisoner education programs in
Maryland ran out of the State Department of Education, and I worked in close
proximity to the state adult education staff.  So I’ve generally felt pretty
connected to adult education community.  

 

I started to work with prisoner education related federal grant program at
the U.S. Department of Education in 2001.  This has given me many
opportunities to connect with correctional education programs in various
states – as well as in some jails.  I guess my perspective remains primarily
that of a practitioner – but I’ve had good opportunities to rub shoulders
with researcher, and to be engaged with policy issues.    

 

One thing that I find interesting about prisoner education is that it exists
on the edge of “education” and rubs up against numerous other disciplines.
Working in correctional education requires engagement across various
disciplines.  Positions I held in Maryland bounced back and forth a few
times between the State's departments of education and public safety.  Some
of the most interesting work I have done during my federal services has been
with the interagency “prisoner reentry” initiative.  I’ve had many occasions
to learn that what something looks like does vary a lot by where you are
standing!  

 

David's Question 1 -- My Response:

 

Thanks to David for calling attention to the ETS publication “Locked Up and
Locked Out.”  I think it is a great piece on the state of correctional
education today.  The conclusions that education and training behind bars
can improve employment prospects and cut recidivism are well supported in a
heavily footnoted chapter titled “The Prison Education Enterprise.”  I won’t
attempt to rehash that well developed and well-documented discussion.  

 

Another interesting support important to those who handle State tax dollars
is the work done by the “Washington State Institute for Public Policy.”
This unit is a well-respected GAO like agency in the State of Washington.
In January of this year, they posted tables of “Evidence Based Adult
Corrections Programs, What Works and What Does Not.”  Their tables show that
adult education and vocational training in prison are effective.  See:
http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/pub.asp?docid=06-01-1201

 

But what do we mean by effective?  Correctional education is not a miracle
drug and does not “cure” individuals with criminal tendencies.  The best
predictor of future behavior is prior behavior.  Individuals who have
embarked on a life course that includes arrests, convictions, and various
sanctions including incarceration are not easily launched on alternative pro
social live paths.  Many would argue that we have come to rely too heavily
on incarceration, and thus now face the challenge of how to deal with ever
larger prison populations, even as our crime rate has trended downward.  The
prisons are overcrowded because of the staggering return rate for released
prisoners – approaching two thirds.  

 

A “prisoner re-entry movement” has taken hold in this country and is cutting
across traditional political affiliations, recognizing that an approach best
described as “lock em up for a long time in a harsh environment and then
dump them out when they have finished their sentences” is leaving us with a
large group of repeat offenders who are then requiring that more and more
prison cells be constructed.    

 

A thoughtful and research informed approach to this issue suggests that
inmates should be prepared for success in the community while they are still
incarcerated and then that their attempts to attain a crime free life post
incarceration needs various practical supports.  (Of course criminal justice
supervision and sanctions may also be required.)  So education is an
important tool in a program of criminal rehabilitation – not a be all and
end all solution.  

 

David's Question 3 -- My Response:

 

Correctional education generally doesn’t have enemies or people lined up to
oppose it.  Some years back an editor of the journal published by the
American Correctional Association Journal invited me to do a column in favor
of prisoner education to run alongside another written in opposition.  We
had to change the format because the editor failed to find an author willing
to develop the opposing piece.  If education didn’t have a significant cost
– correctional education would be doing great.  

 

Unfortunately, education isn’t cheap – behind bars or in other settings.
Those who decide where to commit our tax dollars are being tugged in a lot
of directions at once.  We’ve all heard education advocates say “let’s
invest in education and slow spending on prisons.”  In fact, most
correctional expenses are mandated.  Security, plant, utilities, food, and
medical care – if you have the inmates, you have these costs.  “Treatment”
programs such as recreation, drug treatment, counseling, religion, work
programs and education are discretionary.  These make up a very small
proportion of the corrections budget.  If your population is increasing, and
you are being told “hold down spending” – prison schools don’t always come
out of that process intact.  (Many fail to realize that the explosive costs
of medical care has hit prison budgets just as they have other segments of
our society.  If you are told to hold spending to a 3% increase while
medical costs are going up 10% -- how do you balance that budget?)

 

But to respond more directly to the question – we hear of increases one year
in one State – decreases in two others.   It is very difficult to track a
trend.  We don’t have great data on the investment in correctional
education.  Richard Coley and his fellow authors come down hard on the lack
of good national data about correctional education.  I think it is one of
the most important conclusions of this publication.   That we really don’t
know trends in program availability, spending, enrollments and outcomes –
this indicates to me that we need to do better.  

 

John Linton

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov]On Behalf Of David Rosen
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2006 10:45 PM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: [SpecialTopics 201] Corrections Education,Family Literacy and
Transition to Community Education


Colleagues, 

I would like to welcome our guests: John Linton, Correctional Education,
Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, U.S. Department of Education; Stephen
J. Steurer, Ph.D., Executive Director, Correctional Education Association;
and William R. Muth, PhD, Assistant Professor, Reading Education and Adult
Literacy, Virginia Commonwealth University.

The discussion this week is in the realm of corrections education and its
connections with family and community education.  Together we guest experts
and participants -- will explore what we know from research, professional
wisdom, experience as practitioners and as students, about prison family
literacy and about how to help inmates who are being released to connect
with community-based education programs and to continue their learning until
they achieve their goals.

First I would like to invite each of our guests to introduce themselves, to
tell us about their work in this area and their interest in corrections
education which connects with family and community education.

I would also like to invite you to begin posting your questions for our
guests.  I'll begin by posting some of mine:

I would like to start with some general questions about corrections
education before focusing on family literacy and connections to community
education. One of the readings that was suggested was Locked Up and Locked
Out   [ "Locked Up and Locked Out, An Educational Perspective on the US
Prison Population," Coley, Richard J. and Barton, Paul E., 2006 Available on
line at the ETS web site:
http://tinyurl.com/qmzfa ] I have three questions stimulated by that
reading:

1. Locked Up and Locked Out  claims that research shows that “education and
training programs can raise employment prospects and cut recidivism”  Can
you elaborate on that. What is the research evidence? What do we know about
what makes corrections education and training effective?

2. Steve Steurer, you have written that “Public policy on crime and
punishment should be determined by the most effective crime prevention and
reduction technique available through proven research.” (quote cited in
Locked Up and Locked Out)  Can you tell us what are some of these
techniques?
3. Locked Up and Locked Out  describes the declining investment in prison
education. “Captive Students, an ETS report published in early 1996,
reported a decline in the resources available for education and training in
prisons, as well as a wide variation of resources among the states.
According to the report, at least half of all state correctional
institutions had cut their inmate educational programs over the prior five
years.”  “The decline has continued. From 1990 to 2000, the proportion of
prison staff providing education fell from 4.1 to 3.2 percent of the total
staff.” What has been the investment pattern since 2000? Further decreases?
Level, increases? Has there been a “turnaround” as it was predicted there
would be by Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project based
in Washington, D.C.? What are the prospects for increased funding for prison
education?



David J. Rosen
Special Topics Discussion Moderator
djrosen at comcast.net




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/specialtopics/attachments/20060918/4bd01e81/attachment.html