Recidivism In Prison

Many individuals who leave prison are left in worse positions than they were coming in. The U.S. Department of Justice says “67% of the 404,638 state prisoners released in 2005 in 30 states were arrested within 3 years of release, and 76.6% were arrested within 5 years of release” (“Bureau of Justice Statistics”). Recidivism is the term used when someone returns to prison after serving his or her sentence. And to reduce recidivism is important that we promote education in and out of prison. I believe that providing education inside prisons will help reduce the rate of recidivism.

The United States puts a lot of money into the prison system. Verta Institute for Justice says, “The total price to taxpayers was $39 billion, $5.4 billion more

than the $33.5 billion reflected in corrections budgets alone” (Delaney and Henrichson, “What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers”).

In addition, The Washington post says, “states spend $71 billion on prisons and $534 billion on schools each year. But that combined state and local prison budget is now over an eighth the size of the school budget” (Ingraham, “The states that spend more money on prisoners than college students”). A lot of taxpayer’s money goes into the prison system, but why? The biggest factor is the cost of each inmate. Studies have shown that it costs roughly $167,731 a year to feed and house a single inmate (Santora, "City’s Annual Cost Per Inmate”). That’s a lot of money, considering “the American criminal justice system holds more than 2.3 million people” (Rabuy and Wagner, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016”). And as stated before over half of those people get recycled back into the system. More money is put into our prison system than our education system, which leads to crime, and the cycle repeats. Yes, we need an educational reform, and yes the criminal justice system needs to be revised so that people don’t get sentenced wrongly,

but we also need to change how the prison system works too. There needs to be “restorative justice” in the justice system, which means that we should think past the “quick solution,” to punish individuals, and instead seek to help people become better individuals, and make that our obligation. If inmates had a chance to improve their education they would not return to prison because they would recognize that the system is only designed for failure. People do not purposely seek out failure; they will contest for success if they have the right tools and knowledge to make better choices.
Most people in prison will one day return to society.

And one of the main reasons why people go to prison is because they are not knowledge about how to deal with life in society. Helping people gain an education is significant to prevent re-offences and a reduction of recidivism. And if we truly care about reducing crime rates and provide effective rehabilitation programs, we would put more investment into higher education in prison. The University of California, Los Angeles and The University of Western Ontario found that “schooling significantly reduces the probability of incarceration” (Lance and Moretti, “Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and

Self-Reports”).
People who commit crime are the very individuals within our community. Some of those individuals take the path least taken and commit a crime. If we could invest more time and money into a society where we could help people find alternative ways to solving problems, then there would commit fewer crimes. To put this into perspective, after doing their time, most of the prison population will return to society. Some back into our neighborhoods. But what can these people contribute to our communities? Is it better to help them become contributing members of society and become taxpayers, or let them fall back into the vicious cycle of crime? These people get into the cycle because they continue supporting themselves the only way they know how, which is through crime. The solution is simple; we should offer inmates a chance to receive an education. Why do we have programs to help DUI or speeding violators? At the end of the day, we’re people with flaws, but people who want to make an effort to helping themselves and to correct their mistakes should be given opportunities to do so while serving their long sentences. I think it would even serve, as an incentive to inmates, if we allow a policy that if you complete a degree in prison that you would be considered for early release parole. In the time inmates are serving their time they could be improving themselves so that they will come out as better people.