InmateTutoringBibliography

From LiteracyTentWiki

Videos

HOW DO YOU SPELL MURDER? 2003 Video Vérité. About a literacy program at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton managed by inmates. All tutors are inmates.
http://www.videoverite.tv/pages/film_hdysm_about.html

WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU. A film about and by women inmates of New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. "The film goes inside a writing workshop led by playwright and activist Eve Ensler, consisting of 15 women, most of whom were convicted of murder. Through a series of exercises and discussions, the women delve into their pasts and explore the nature of their crimes and the extent of their own culpability. The film culminates in an emotionally charged prison performance of the women's writing by acclaimed actors Mary Alice, Glenn Close, Hazelle Goodman, Rosie Perez and Marisa Tomei."
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2003/whatiwant/about.html

Research

Featured Research Resources in the Correctional Education Special Collection at http://www.nwlincs.org/correctional_education/Research.htm

Correctional Education as a Crime Control Program

This study, prepared for the United States Department of Education, Office of Correctional Education, compares the cost-effectiveness of two crime control methods - educating prisoners vs. expanding prisons. One million dollars spent on correctional education prevents about 600 crimes, while that same money invested in incarceration prevents 350 crimes. Correctional education is almost twice as cost-effective as a crime control policy.

OCE/CEA Three State Recidivism Study

The Correctional Education Association conducted the Three State Recidivism Study for the United States Department of Education Office of Correctional Education. The study was designed to see if education, independent of other programs, could have significant impact on the behavior of inmates after release. Data on about 3,200 inmates, who were released from Maryland, Minnesota and Ohio prisons in late 1997 and early 1998, are reported in this longitudinal study. The research design, which uses educational participation while incarcerated as the major variable, measures the impact of education while incarcerated on post release behavior, primarily recidivism and employment. The states pooled their data in a format that allows for individual state as well as aggregate reports. Within each state the correctional, parole and probation, education and work force agencies cooperated in the data collection. The analysis of the data indicates that inmates who participated in education programs while incarcerated showed lower rates of recidivism after three years. For each state the three measures of recidivism, re-arrest, re-conviction and re-incarceration were significantly lower. The employment data shows that in every year, for the three years that the study participants were followed, the wages reported to the state labor departments were higher for the education participants compared to the non-participants.

Survey of the Level of Learning Disability/ Mental Handicap Among the Prison Population

A two-year research study which says there is a notable degree of learning disability/mental handicap among the prisoner population. This is an acknowledgement of the disproportionately high number of people with intellectual disabilities who are incarcerated in Irish prisons. It suggests psychological assessments be carried out on all prisoners under the age of 21.

Reducing Prisoner Reoffending

Currently around 58 per cent of prisoners are reconvicted within two years of being released. Research indicates that factors associated with reoffending include poor reasoning and thinking skills, drugs misuse and low levels of literacy and numeracy. The Prison Service in England and Wales has made good progress in introducing programmes designed to help tackle these factors and in September 2000 established a Strategy Board to provide direction for the further development and delivery of programmes. This article discusses these efforts and future needs.

Resources

A number of web and print-based resources on corrections education, social justice and related issues corrections education