Today I found an article that is so full of discussion potential that I will probably save it for some sort of critical pedagogy project (perhaps the idea where students write from different perspectives of the people involved). The article (which can be found here) is called “A Matter of Prison Degrees” from The Daily Iowan written by Terry McCoy. McCoy writes about ways of using technology to give inmates an education and, more importantly, the issue of funding such technology.

Initially this article caught my attention because of the interesting way it showed the use of long distance learning technologies in prison

Scores of men mill about the courtyard, talking and taking refuge from a rhythmic rain. Around them, towering brick walls rim the yard and deliver a message as inescapable as their presence: No one in, no one out.

In a room upstairs, two televisions flicker on. Three men walk in and sit down at a desk before a three-microphone setup. They’re dressed in denim - like prisoners.

From nearly 40 miles away, the signal comes, bounding over the walls from a world these men haven’t seen in years….

And then, as simply as that, college begins at the Anamosa State Penitentiary.

This seems like a great idea for getting educational opportunities to inmates who otherwise wouldn’t be able to have them.  It also serves as a way to get teachers to teach inmates.  If teachers are uneasy about teaching in a prison, using long distance education tools keeps the teacher feeling safe and thus possibly more willing to take on such jobs.

However, the problem with long distance education in prisons is that it is a method of teaching which requires fairly up to date technology; technology which may not fit into the budget.

But this network, some professors and prison officials fear, may be only putting off what could be an inevitable end to higher education in prison. With teachers on the outside requiring more Internet use and the state Legislature continually downsizing its prison education budget, it’s becoming much more difficult to earn collegiate degrees behind bars.

This issue raises some interesting discussion topics.  For instance, one could ask why the budget cannot be expanded to meet these inmates needs for long distance learning.  Or, on the other side of the argument, one could ask why the state feels it needs to provide education to its incarcerated citizens in the first place.  It’s one thing to give them some old books and a part time teacher, but it is quite a different thing to provide them with state of the art technology.  I have a feeling that if taxpayers were told that more of their taxes was going to be put towards giving incarcerated citizens a decent education, they would probably take on the second opinion.

McCoy’s article makes an interesting point concerning the question of why we should even care about providing inmates with an education.

This sharp decrease in funding seems counterintuitive to prison’s primary goal -to correct convict behavior. Recidivism studies agree: The more education prisoners receive while incarcerated, the less likely they’ll be back.

On average, education in prison reduces recidivism by nearly 10 percent, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections found in 2001. Monetarily, every dollar spent on education returns more than two to the state, the study concluded.

This means if Iowa had had no funding, 163 more men would have been readmitted to a state penitentiary during 2007, according to a *Daily Iowan* analysis of Iowa prison records. The state pays $80 per day per inmate in incarceration costs.

“It’s expensive to incarcerate folks,” said state Sen. Tom Hancock, D-Epworth, the chairman of the justice system appropriations subcommittee.

This is an important point to take into account.  Would the cost of providing inmates with an education be less than the cost of keeping them in prison over and over again?  If so, then the answer seems obvious.  But I think there is another factor in the question of funding prison education programs: the public’s opinion of those incarcerated.

The popular notion of inmates is that they are all murderers, rapists, etc (an idea that McCoy only furthers when she writes that distance learning “connects killer, kidnappers, and thieves with the realm of thought”).  While this is certainly true about some people in the prison system, I feel there are also those in prison who are there based on foolish mistakes which they regret.  Perhaps society would be better off spending the money to get these people an education, if not for the greater good than certainly for the financial aspect of one less prisoner to pay for.  However, I feel that the public’s perception  of those incarcerated may be too biased or stereotyped for people to back the funding of such programs, however beneficial they may be.

A Matter of Prison Degrees by Terry McCoy, The Daily Iowan, 2-25-08