Reducing Recidivism Education and vocational skills are mandatory in life. Education factors all aspects of life. Without a proper education one is limited to basic life rewards. Not to say that money is the only reason for an education, but it seems to be the force that drives offenders to keep offending. If one does not possess a basic education then the next best thing would be vocational training. Vocational training is an excellent way for some of the low educated people to get out of the life that put them in prison and to achieve a positive position in society. Education is the area that society needs to be concerned with, according to a study by Beck and Shipley . The study was conducted on 16,000 prisoners from 11 states in the effort to reduce on recidivism. The study showed that "62.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years." This study proved that prisoners with an eighth grade education or lower were rearrested at a rate of 61.9%, while those who were high school graduates were rearrested at a rate of 57.4%. Just by the numbers alone one can conclude that an education is vital to the rehabilitation of offenders. There are many types of education that offenders can utilize. Many prisons already have programs established to help people incarcerated to obtain an education. Programs designed to help offenders to read and write, get a General Education Development (GED) certificate, and vocational training. Most of these programs are already in place and are effectively working. The problem occurs when prisoners are not exposed to the education while incarcerated. Programs should be mandatory and... ... middle of paper ... ...enders are not rehabilitated they have just been locked up for their sentence. Dr. Cobun felt that more emphasis should be placed on education and vocational programs that would give the prisoners a future in the community and give them a chance at parole. The states should not spend extra funds for education programs and the government should not fund higher learning for incarcerated individuals. Convicted felons should be allowed to obtain their GED but they should not have the opportunity to go to college while they are incarcerated. If the government wants to spend money on education it should be for the lower income families that can not afford it and not a convict trying to pass time. If states want to spend money, they should spend it on vocational programs that will help the prisoners once they are released.
Instead of prisoners just sitting in a cell doing nothing, why not put them to work, "Every inmate that works saves taxpayers $5,000 a year"(Smith). There are prisoners that work in greenhouses, that generated $57 million in revenue. As budget cuts rise working prisoners become more and more valuable. Inmates are finding ways to save money by recycling there old mattress, that would of end up in landfills. Some prisons even have their inmates help clean up dirty parks around them. While the prisoners are doing this they are learning skills , that will help them with different jobs. Prisoners that do a good job get rewarded with money bonuses. Prisoners learning how to be more responsible and understand how to become a better person will help them in the up coming future. With the prisoners getting paid for bonuses for good work this will make it feel as if it’s a real job. The experience that the inmates are receiving will help them with jobs once they are released from prison. Prisoners will strive to do better with the bonuses they are receiving, and will understand again what its like work. Now with this happening this will ensure the prisoners will have a better and healthier
It is to no surprise that America has a large amount of its people incarcerated for a variety of reasons. One must ask themselves how we can help these individuals get back on track. The answer is America’s most powerful weapon known to man; an education. This is an annotated bibliography for research on the effects of education in the prison system and if these effects are worth taxpayer’s money.
Since 1995, enrollments in the urban public school system have doubled up to 62 percent in the 2010-2011 school year. Still, they received less money.
Recidivism is defined as the act of reverting back to undesirable behaviors for which ...
Rhodes, Lorna A. “Pathological Effects of the Supermaximum Prison.” American Journal of Public Health. October 2005. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449421/# __sec3title.
also reduce prison and jail costs and prevent additional crimes in the future. Before we can
Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.
Recidivism is an essential concept within the criminal justice system. It is the tendency of a previously convicted offender to reoffend. Thus, it is important to study the rates and causes of recidivism in order to recognize certain patterns. The patterns of reoffending can help law enforcement officials and policy makers implement strategies to lower the rates. On a humanitarian basis, studying the patterns can help with the difficult transition from prison to society for those recently released.
Tulman, J. B. (2008). Time to Reverse the School-to-Prison Pipeline. (Cover story). Policy & Practice (19426828), 66(1), 22-27.
The rate of repeat offenders is rising and the need to suppress this rate should be attended to immediately. Statistics supports the implementation of stricter rules, as the continual rate of the repeat offenders increases.
All countries are different and you can’t expect the same results as one country that isn’t like ours at all. Implementing this system in the US might have no results at all. This might very well be true, but even so it would do no harm to experiment and see it the system would work or not. I propose that the system be tested in one or a few prisons, give the prisoners the opportunity to learn, rehabilitate, and focus on reentry, after this see how many of these prisoners that followed these programs have found themselves back in prison after 3 years. If the numbers are lower than the expected rate, then I would say this system is beneficial and helps prevent crime. It would only cost a bit more money to test this system out, but if proven successful, this system will cost taxpayers way less money and the community would be a safer place. Now who doesn’t like the sound of that? Less crime and potentially more people at work, generating more tax-money, instead of costing more
The amount th of money that has been spend on prisons is about 49 billion dollars the reason for this is because people are being sent to prison and some re offend and come back. The main purpose of going to jail is to never come back , but in some cases others don 't seem to learn from their mistakes. This is the reason why prison education would come in handy. In the article “Education and Vocational Training in Prisons Reduces Recidivism, Improves Job Outlook” its states that “Researchers found that inmates who participate in correctional education programs have 43 percent lower odds of returning to prison than those who do not”This quote is pretty much saying that the percentage of inmates that has education is less likely to come back. This is good because the amount of money that we would be saving would probably help us with debt that we face a lot in american. Education is the most important form of rehabilitation for
According to experts and inmates, education is a key to successful reentry into society that most inmates are lacking. Over the past twenty years, the need for education within jails and prisons has risen to an all-time high...
Education in prisons could benefit in many ways, to reducing criminal behavior, pre- release, enrolling into educational programs, better employment history, and less discipline issues. In reality, most prisoners become more mentally alert, resulting in moral growth because of exposure to liberal
as to lower the chances of that individual re-offending. For example, if an individual committed an