Education vs Incarceration

Education vs. Incarceration Since 1980, the U.S. prison population has grown exponentially, expanding from approximately 500,000 to 2.3 million people in just three decades. America now has the distinction of leading the world in prison population: We account for 25 percent of all prisoners but only 5 percent of the global population. We spend almost $70 billion annually to place adults in prison and jails, to confine youth in detention centers, and to supervise 7.3 million individuals on probation and parole. Indeed, confinement costs have claimed an increasing share of state and local government spending. This trend has starved essential social programs, most notably education. Almost 75 percent of imprisonment spending is made at the state level, where dollars are drawn from a general fund that is used to pay for a litany of public needs that include health care, housing, public assistance, and education. The National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) shows that elementary and high schools receive 73 percent of their state funding from this discretionary fund; public colleges and universities count on the fund for half of their budgets. However, $9 out of every $10 that supports imprisonment comes from the same pool of money. With tens of billions of dollars in prison spending annually, states are finding that there is simply less discretionary money available to invest in education. For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling. While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 are behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine. The nationwide figures, as of Jan. 1, 2010 include 1,596,127 people in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in local jails; a total 2,319,258 out of almost 230 million American adults. As a result of choices on where government dollars are spent, and the kind of justice system and educational system policymakers have chosen to provide, the lifetime likelihood of African