The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Where are our priorities?

California best illustrates National Education Association President Reg Weaver's sentiments expressed in a 2003 address: "Does it rile you up that our nation would rather incarcerate than educate?"

While statewide polls show California voters consistently prioritize education, decision-makers continue to prioritize punishment to the detriment of our children's futures. And not just at the state level. For example, Fresno County has a youth jail in the works that will not open until 2040, which means the county has planned a jail for kids whose parents have not yet been born.

In the last four years, California schools have suffered more than $9.8 billion in cuts. These cuts have translated into school closures, increases in class size, layoffs of teachers and support staff and a devastating shortage of librarians, counselors and nurses. By contrast, the number of people in prison has not grown since 1999, but prison overspending has gone off the charts.

Many of our schools lack basic supplies and instructional materials. Schools are cutting art and music. Extracurricular activities are no longer affordable, and after-school programs have been decimated.

It is no wonder that wealthy California is one of the lowest-performing states in terms of education, next to historically poor Mississippi. We spend $600 less per pupil than the national average and rank near the bottom in all objective measures of success, according to a December 2004 Rand study.

Meanwhile, California imprisons more people than any state but Texas. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2005-06 budget includes a 31.9 percent increase in corrections spending compared with two years ago, while education spending is cut.

Study after study shows that investing in education pays huge dividends, while paying to imprison is an ongoing cost. Consider this: While the Schwarzenegger administration has requested money to build three new prisons -- and bailed out corrections for nearly $1 billion in overspending during the past 36 months -- the governor reneged on a promise to restore $2 billion taken from schools last year.

Some people advocate a double moratorium: Stop education cuts and stop all prison and jail expansion. But that's not enough. Former Gov. George Deukmejian, who, as the "Iron Duke," presided over prison expansion in the 1980s, now advocates reducing the number of people in prison. Any fiscal expert knows that the only way to cut costs is to reduce the number of people in prison.

The money saved should be directed to education, education, education -- for pre-kindergarten kids through grown women and men who need skills adequate for a rapidly changing economy. Included among the children and adults are those locked up now and those who have gone or will go home.

Education underfunding and education discrimination will always be a costly error for the Golden State. We boast the world's sixth or seventh-largest economy as a result of decades of public investment. What we do best is innovate, and it takes know-how to make something new.

When California invested in all residents, through the innovative 1959 master plan, concrete and steel went into building schools and roads -- not prisons and jails. Is it a coincidence that the state's economic well-being has gone askew at the same time education is under attack and prisons and jails under construction?

We need to shift public priorities by taking on a key question of our
times: Education or incarceration?

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a professor at the University of Southern California. She is a keynote speaker at today's "Education or Incarceration" conference in Los Angeles, organized by the Education Not Incarceration Coalition ( www.ednotinc.org ).