Welcome to America, where 2.3 million people are locked up, and each year 600,000 of those individuals will be coming home, often to communities near you. For the most part, they will leave prison uneducated, unskilled, unprepared, and angry at having spent years locked away in a warehouse. This is the legacy of the law-and-order movement and the prison boom of the 1990s: America is in the midst of an incarceration and post incarceration crisis.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV: Human Capital, Employability, and Successful Reentry
Congress and the Obama administration seem poised to address the catastrophic results of more than two decades of correctional policy that has been built largely around the practice of warehousing prisoners. Too often, these individuals come from the ranks of the nation’s poor, uneducated, and unskilled. They enter prison this way, and they leave in no better condition. Rather than improving their chances at becoming productive members of society, prison time only serves to reaffirm violent and antisocial behaviors.
A correctional policy that emphasizes mass incarceration and deemphasizes rehabilitative efforts will likely be successful only if its goal is the expansion of the criminal class. Unfortunately, this characterizes the tough-on-crime correctional agenda of the 1990’s, and its shameful legacy.
Federal efforts to address our country’s post-incarceration crisis should be designed around the seminal concept that work – a job, stable employment, a means of livelihood – is the very core of successful reentry.
Current scholarship often focuses far too much on manipulating employer behavior through a range of incentives or penalties. Some researchers suggest dramatic expansion of the WOTC and other financial incentives to make ex-offenders more attractive applicants. Others suggest laws that would purportedly improve the job prospects of ex-offenders by subjecting employers to greater liability for employment discrimination under a range of new antidiscrimination laws.
Although such reforms merit consideration, they still fail to address the most fundamental component of the equation: the average inmate still leaves prison with a rocky employment history, limited education, and the veritable Scarlet Letter that is a criminal record. He has little human capital.
With federal guidance and assistance, all correctional systems in the United States should enact a range of reforms that will focus on using prison time to build human capital and decrease the unnecessary obstacles that prevent successful transition.
Although a full discussion of Congressional authority to pass legislation that mandates action by state departments of corrections is not necessary, it is worthwhile to very briefly address this issue. There are no legitimate constitutional concerns that would prevent congress from enacting a range of prison reforms that are applicable to both federal and state correctional facilities.
Congressional power to enact such legislation is firmly grounded in the spending clause of the Constitution, which provides that "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States. . . ."
A range of prison reform initiatives can be offered to the states as, essentially, an offer of contract. Federal funds should be provided if states chose to accept the offer and implement the mandated changes. If states opt not to implement the provisions of a particular act, they can forfeit a certain percentage of federal funding that is allotted to them for law enforcement and correctional efforts.
Not only is such a proposal constitutional, it is also entirely rational: states that are unwilling to take even the most basic steps to facilitate reentry – even when provided with additional federal funding - should bear more of the financial burden associated with policing those individuals, arresting them, and putting them back in prison.
Proposal I: New Mandatory Minimums: National Standards for Prisoner Education
The tough-on-crime mania that fueled the prison boom of the 1980’s and 90’s brought with it not only an embrace of purportedly law-and-order policies, but also a near wholesale rejection of rehabilitative strategies. Politics became policy. The floor debates surrounding the passage of the Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (the Act) largely devolved into contest over who could seize the mantle of being toughest on crime.
Some senators launched into lengthy tirades, decrying spending on social programs and social workers, demanding that the money go to building more prisons, and urging tougher mandatory minimums and truth in sentencing laws.
The dominant paradigm of the day was that we needed more police officers and less social workers, more prisons cells and less prison programs. Cut the fat: arrest people, lock them up for years, and consider the problem solved. In such an environment, it is not surprising that funding for prisoner higher education became a favorite target of politicians.
For years, Senator Jesse Helms had unsuccessfully urged the elimination of Pell Grants for all prisoners. But in 1994, at the height of the tough-on-crime mania, the idea gathered steam. Three weeks before the passage of the Act, Congressman Timothy Holden, a democrat from Pennsylvania, had stood before the C-SPANN cameras waiving a copy of the local Pottstown newspaper. The paper reported that the federal government was spending $200 million to provide Pell Grants to prisoners, affording them a free education at the taxpayer’s expense. Congressman Holden was outraged.
His outrage was shared by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas, who drove the point home by telling the story of a hard-working police officer whose daughter could not qualify for a Pell Grant. The Senator quoted the police officer as saying, "maybe I should take off my badge and rob a store".
Lost on these policymakers was the basic logic of the Pell Grant program: help low-income people obtain a higher education. The vast majority of prisoners come from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, would meet the income requirements necessary to receive Pell Grants, and could stand to benefit dramatically from such grants.
Unfortunately, logic and sound public policy were discarded in favor of tough rhetoric and the embrace of a purely punitive correctional system. Senator Hutchinson introduced an amendment to the crime bill that would prohibit all prisoners from receiving Pell Grants while incarcerated. Only a few days later, the bill passed by an overwhelming margin.
As promised, the Act was a tough one, although, in some respects, certainly not a smart one: In spite of the political grandstanding and outrage over Pell Grant money spent on prisoners, the grants used by prisoners in 1993-94 amounted to 1//10 of 1% of the entire Pell program. No qualified law-abiding student was ever denied a grant because of prisoner education.
Education, Employability, and Successful Reentry
Education while in prison both dramatically reduces an individual’s chance of recidivism, and dramatically increases employability. The importance of higher education is widely recognized among the general public, but for ex-offenders the value is even more dramatic. In 1994, the State of Texas reported the extraordinary impact of postsecondary education on inmates, noting, "Two years after release, the overall recidivism rate for college degree holders was as low as 12%, and inversely differentiated by type of degree."
Individuals who held Associate’s degrees had less than a 14% chance of returning to prison; Bachelor’s degree holders less than 6%, and Master’s degree holders a 0% chance of being reincarcerated within that time frame. Even after eight years out, those individuals in the Texas study who earned a Bachelor’s degree while in prison recidivated at a rate of less than 8%.
Studies from other states published around the same time offered similarly positive results. Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, Alabama, Wisconsin, and New York all confirmed a "clear and fairly consistent correlation" between completion of collegiate studies and significant reductions in recidivism.
Prison education also dramatically improves employment prospects. Men and women who attend college while incarcerated are 30% more likely to be employed than those who do not. Part of this difference is attributable to employer attitudes. Although the vast majority of employers consider a criminal record a significant mark against an applicant, survey data suggests that employers view higher education as one of the most effective means of overcoming this obstacle.
College coursework completed in prison can have a profound signaling effect, indicating to employers that an individual is capable of completed work. This positive signaling effect can help to mitigate the negative signaling effect that is often associated with a criminal record.
On a more individual level, prison education has powerful normalizing effects: it offers some relief from the pain of imprisonment and helps inmates to adopt pro-social norms. In effect, prison education instills in inmates a positive attitude that is antithetical to the antisocial norms of prison life. Unlike so many of the other institutions and processes that dominate the prison landscape, education – even while in confinement – actually enhances an individual’s chances of successfully reentering the community upon release.
Prison education can have long-lasting, positive effects on a broad range of social contexts, impacting further educational attainment, employment, involvement in the community, family relationships, and likelihood of further criminal activity. Instead of recognizing these effects and encouraging more states to facilitate prison higher education programs, Congress dealt such programs a death blow. In doing so, the United States government opted to swell the ranks of uneducated, unemployable, unsocialized, and contra-socialized inmates, the vast majority of whom will eventually be returning home to our communities.
Re-Instating Pell Grants for Prisoners & Creating a National Standard for Prisoner Education
Congress should immediately repeal the prohibition against prisoners receiving Pell Grants. The benefit of such grants dramatically outweighs the limited amount of Pell Grant money that would be allotted to prisoners who would enroll in college programs.
Although higher education has proven incredibly effective at reducing recidivism and increasing employment prospects, we should recognize that many individuals entering prisons possess neither a high school diploma nor GED. In the federal prison system, entering prisoners - unless able to demonstrate functional literacy on a 12th grade level - are required to enroll in 240 hours of educational programming. As a result, the percentage of new federal prisoners enrolled in educational programs is twice as high – 40% - as the percentage among state prisoners.
Congress should adopt a national minimum standard for correctional education, based on the federal prison model. Such a standard would better prepare prisoners to reenter the labor market, obtain a GED, and pursue higher education.
Researchers have estimated that such a standard would impact more than 340,000 state prison inmates who lack a high school diploma or GED, and are not currently participating in any educational programming. States that sign on to such a national standard should receive funding to bridge the gap between their current correctional education budgets and the cost of implementing the program. Those states that opt out of the standard should forfeit a percentage of funding received by their respective departments of corrections.
A Comment on Prison Work
Many state legislators and corrections officials suggest that prison work programs provide inmates with marketable skills, teach them about work ethic and responsibility, and prevent idleness. Some of these benefits are more readily apparent than others. Although there are certainly exceptions, most of the work performed in state prisons across America is unskilled.
Surveys of inmates suggest that the work environment in these prisons often bears little, if any, resemblance to working in the outside world. Inmates at work are closely supervised, and, by their own account, there is often little opportunity for choice or responsibility. Much of this owes to the basic purpose of such programs.
State corrections officials and prison staff routinely cite prison management as the primary function of prison industries. Such work programs exist primarily to "contol. . . the prison on a day to day basis", give inmates time out of their cells, and keep inmates occupied to prevent them from "causing trouble". Although these goals are not "antithetical to the goal of rehabilitation, they are also not necessarily complementary." Work programs focused on reducing recidivism and increasing employability are hard to implement in an environment where the goal of the system (management and prison control) takes precedence over the goal of the program.
Not surprisingly, the effect of prison work programs on employability and recidivism is generally regarded as being quite small. Although the federal prison industries provide for a broader range of work options, including some semi-skilled positions, there is no credible data suggesting anything more than a modest reduction in recidivism.
Even in the limited number of situations where prisoners are able to engage in semi-skilled work, very few are ever afforded the opportunity to obtain integrated qualifications that relate to their work, and would be helpful in enhancing their future employment prospects.
Beyond this, it is likely that any positive signaling effect of completing a prison work program is much less significant than the signaling effect associated with completing college coursework while incarcerated. Because the data on prison work programs points to relatively limited effectiveness in improving employability or reducing recidivism, it would be unwise for Congress and the new administration to direct their efforts toward replicating the federal prison industries model at the state level.
Efforts to make time spent in prison more productive should focus on education. Unlike work experience gained in prison, educational credentials earned while incarcerated are valuable commodities in the outside world. Efforts to improve job readiness and employability through work experience should be directed toward the creation of transitional jobs programs that can be entered upon release from prison.