The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

There is more than a little irony here. As of last year, the state was spending more on prisons than on its university system. Prison spending is escalating at the rate of 9 percent a year, compared to 5 percent increases in higher education spending.

By the 2012-13 fiscal year, state spending on its prison system is predicted to average $15.4 billion annually, compared to $15.3 billion for the university system.

Compounding the irony is the fact that California's taxpayers don't get much of a return for the bucks spent on prisons. University graduates, on the other hand, are the keys to our future.

There is direct linkage between education and incarceration spending. While about 4 percent of the general U.S. population is illiterate, in California prisons, the rate runs about 21 percent. More than half of the state's 175,000-plus inmates read below the seventh-grade level, the accepted standard for functional illiteracy.

Perhaps that explains why California, which has the nation's largest inmate population, also has the nation's highest recidivism rate.

We certainly can understand the court receiver's enthusiasm for getting better medical care for inmates in the state system. That would help address the “cruel and unusual” aspect of punishment.

But our elected leaders also need to take their heads out of the sand, and face the fact that one of California's leading growth industries is its prison system. It's very expensive, and the costs are only going to go up - as long as the system operates in such a way as to all-but-guarantee a revolving-door environment that sees the same people recycling through the system.

A good place to start a reform movement would be to offer more education to inmates, who are a true captive audience. Just teaching them to read and write would probably cut the recidivism rate significantly.

Once they learn to read and write, they can be given job skills, maybe some tutoring on how to interact with other humans - without trying to rip them off, or apart.

In other words, take the same approach with prison inmates as the public education system takes with teens in high school.

A solid education in the basic core disciplines, coupled with some refinement of people skills, could pay enormous dividends to the inmates when they walk out of prison, and to California's taxpayers, who now foot the ever-rising bill for warehousing lawbreakers.

This is not a soft-on-crime approach. The worst of the worst among us should and will be punished. All we're saying is that this state spends tens of billions on its prisons, and gets absolutely nothing in return.

If we're going to have a prison industry, at least it should be an industry that has a useful product. Just teaching inmates to read and write effectively would be a good start.

June 23, 2008
http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles/2008/06/23/opinion/062308a.txt