Should Education Be Mandatory In Prison Essay

The phrase “Education is the key to success” is a common one. Then why, some may ask, is education not mandatory in prisons? All humans, criminals or not, should be granted equal opportunities to indulge in learning and further their knowledge. Getting an education is a necessary factor in receiving a college degree, obtaining a job and making a living, yet prisoners aren’t being schooled. Being taught certain lessons like how to properly read, write an essay, solve a math problem or balance a chemical equation, inmates can find something they are passionate about, which can give them reasons to continually power through incarceration. Furthermore, being able to write essays and journal entries can act as a stress reliever and be therapeutic.

Education is therapeutic. Inmates “Disclose a remarkable range and depth of human experiences. Lost loves, deaths and sexual and physical abuse incidents” are common (Friedman, 265). When events this tragic happen, keeping emotions and memories repressed for so long leads to mental instability. Since prisoners have limited time to converse with one another, an excellent alternative to speaking out problems is writing them out. Yet, 38% of prisoners read at a level two proficiency rate, and very few of them read at a high proficiency level. If education was mandatory in prisons, every inmate would be trained to read. They would become literate and able to express their bottled up feelings on paper and in art forms. In many ways, “Writing helps people to organize thoughts and give meaning to a traumatic experience,” (Harvard Health). By expressing feelings, one can understand where he took a wrong turn in life, got caught up in the wrong crowd or made poor decisions and learn from these mistakes. Once his wrongdoings are taken into account, he will not relive his past, thus preventing