Over Incarcerate - Under Educate

Nirvi Shah
Unlikely Allies Call for Shifting Spending from Prisons to Schools
Published Online: April 8, 2011
Education Week
Complete URL: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/08/28prisons.h30.html?r=474648907

There is a trend in which money spent on prisons is increasing while money spent on education is decreasing. “This multidecade trend of prioritizing incarceration over education is not sustainable,” NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said. Conservatives and liberals are ignoring party lines to join in battle against this unsustainable trend. Both sides agree that there has to be a solution - a way to reverse this trend.

Some interesting / disturbing Facts:
* America’s population is 5 percent of the world, but 25 percent of the world’s prison population.
* America spends $88,000 a year to send one person to prison and about $9,000 a year to send one person to school.
* 2.3 million people imprisoned in the United States are minorities, people with mental health issues or a drug addiction, those with low levels of education, and people with a history of unemployment or underemployment.
* Prisons saw the second-largest increase in the share of state and local government spending between 1980 and 2006 after healthcare, while spending for higher education declined.
* Higher education spending grew by 21 percent in that time, while spending on corrections grew by 127 percent.

Yikes! I recently sat through a presentation on the budget by the Newberg, superintendent. Oregon, is right in the mix. "K-12 has only seen a 13.1-percent increase. Human services saw a 62.7-percent increase and public safety had a 46.8-percent increase."

The intended audience for this article is all US citizens concerned for the future of education, and our country in general. This article is relevant because if this trend is not reversed we will continue to see cuts in education.