Summary, Questions 1-3: Issues of Recidivism and Public Support for CE
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From September 18 -26, 2006, on the National Institute for Literacy Special Topics list, a discussion was held on Corrections Education, Family Literacy and Transition to Community Education. For a fuller description of the topic, go to http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/specialtopics/2006/000205.html The original archive of the discussion begins with this post, 200, and ends with post 254.
Introductions -- David Rosen, Special Topics Discussion Moderator
I would like to welcome our guests: John Linton, Correctional Education, Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, U.S. Department of Education; Stephen J. Steurer, Ph.D., Executive Director, Correctional Education Association; and Bill Muth, PhD, Assistant Professor, Reading Education and Adult Literacy, Virginia Commonwealth University.
The discussion this week is in the realm of corrections education and its connections with family and community education. Together we guest experts and participants -- will explore what we know from research, professional wisdom, experience as practitioners and as students, about prison family literacy and about how to help inmates who are being released to connect with community-based education programs and to continue their learning until they achieve their goals.
First I would like to invite each of our guests to introduce themselves, to tell us about their work in this area and their interest in corrections education which connects with family and community education. I would also like to invite you to begin posting your questions for our guests. I'll begin by posting some of mine:
I would like to start with some general questions about corrections education before focusing on family literacy and connections to community education. One of the readings that was suggested was Locked Up and Locked Out [ "Locked Up and Locked Out, An Educational Perspective on the US Prison Population," Coley, Richard J. and Barton, Paul E., 2006 Available on line at the ETS web site: http://tinyurl.com/qmzfa ] I have three questions stimulated by that reading:
1. Locked Up and Locked Out claims that research shows that “education and training programs can raise employment prospects and cut recidivism” Can you elaborate on that. What is the research evidence? What do we know about what makes corrections education and training effective?
2. Steve Steurer, you have written that “Public policy on crime and punishment should be determined by the most effective crime prevention and reduction technique available through proven research.” (quote cited in Locked Up and Locked Out) Can you tell us what are some of these techniques?
3. Locked Up and Locked Out describes the declining investment in prison education. “Captive Students, an ETS report published in early 1996, reported a decline in the resources available for education and training in prisons, as well as a wide variation of resources among the states. According to the report, at least half of all state correctional institutions had cut their inmate educational programs over the prior five years.” “The decline has continued. From 1990 to 2000, the proportion of prison staff providing education fell from 4.1 to 3.2 percent of the total staff.” What has been the investment pattern since 2000? Further decreases? Level, increases? Has there been a “turnaround” as it was predicted there would be by Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project based in Washington, D.C.? What are the prospects for increased funding for prison education?
Question 1. Locked Up and Locked Out claims that research shows that “education and training programs can raise employment prospects and cut recidivism” Can you elaborate on that. What is the research evidence? What do we know about what makes corrections education and training effective? --David Rosen--
Bill Muth, Virginia Commonwealth University Greetings, David & All, It is a real privilege to be a part of this discussion group. As David noted, I am currently at Virginia Commonwealth University, but in my past life (until a year ago), I was an educator with the Federal Bureau of Prisons (and before that, a special education teacher K-6). I will be "in & out" of this discussion as my meetings & classes permit, but I look forward to learning much from the conversation, and I thank David and NIFL for providing this much-needed focus on correctional education (CE).
David, you asked three very hard questions! I am taking a shot at the recidivism one... Participation in prison education programs has been associated with reductions of 10 to 33 percent in recidivism rates (Gaes, Flanagan, Motiuk, & Stewart, 1999; Saylor & Gaes, 1997; Steurer, Smith, & Tracy, 2001). Gaes & Kendig (2002) concluded conservatively that correctional programs had an average effect size of .10. Translating this into a more understandable metric, program participants had a 45 percent likelihood of being arrested compared to a 55 percent likelihood for members of comparison groups. If this low-estimate seems like a small effect, I suggest we look at the scale of the problem (650,000 or so people released from prison each year!)
But recidivism is an enormously complex subject; definitions of recidivism, variety of learner needs, opportunities for follow-through in the community, etc. -- prompting Thom Gehring (2000) to ask if impact on recidivism is the right question. For example, teachers know when a student transforms and gets enthused about learning. Is this not an outcome of the highest order? But will this transformation be sufficient to sustain this learner through the post-release roller-coaster ride, peer pressures, ongoing poverty effects, etc.? Is it reasonable to expect our education programs to have a sustaining power 3+ years after release?
I am conflicted about this issue. When I was in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a post-release employment effects of vocational training programs (Saylor & Gaes, 1997) found a 33% greater survival rate among prisoners that participated in vocational training programs while incarcerated. This study, which was well-designed and stood the test of time as they say, enabled FBOP educators to find new funding sources for these programs after the elimination of Pell Grants in 1995. So I know the language of recidivism is the language of currency.
Sorry for the side-track, David. Back to your question: Why does CE have a positive impact on post-release success? It may be related to the broad relationship between education, work, and crime. Reder and Vogel (1997) found that adults (not limited to prisoners) with self-reported learning disabilities were more likely to be unemployed or work in jobs with low pay and low status. In a study of 68 male prisoners, ages 19-36, Gazze (1988) found an association between lower education levels and higher unemployment and crime, independent of learning disabilities status. Kling, Weiman, and Western (2002) found a relationship between wages, work and crime, and estimated that a 10 percent decrease in an individual’s wages could result in a 10 to 20 percent increase in criminal activity and incarceration. So higher level of education is associated with more work, and better jobs are associated with less crime. Should we be surprised by this?
I am certain that our programs make a difference. In a strange way, prison-based programs have at least one potential advantage over community-based ones. For one, learners tend to persist in school (often for less than ideal reasons, of course), and school is 5-days a week for 90 minutes or more per day. Got to run. More later...
John Linton, US Department of Education Greetings. David asked me to introduce myself. That’s a bit of a challenge. Should I talk about my astrological sign, my weird hobbies, and my hopes for mankind? Perhaps I had better keep this conversation related to correctional education and save those other topics for the happy hour at the next conference. I’ve been privileged to have opportunities to work with prisoner education for quite some number of years – starting as a prison based teacher and then doing a lot of prison school administration work – all in the State of Maryland. For most of my career, the prisoner education programs in Maryland ran out of the State Department of Education, and I worked in close proximity to the state adult education staff. So I’ve generally felt pretty connected to adult education community.
I started to work with prisoner education related federal grant program at the U.S. Department of Education in 2001. This has given me many opportunities to connect with correctional education programs in various states – as well as in some jails. I guess my perspective remains primarily that of a practitioner – but I’ve had good opportunities to rub shoulders with researcher, and to be engaged with policy issues.
One thing that I find interesting about prisoner education is that it exists on the edge of “education” and rubs up against numerous other disciplines. Working in correctional education requires engagement across various disciplines. Positions I held in Maryland bounced back and forth a few times between the State's departments of education and public safety. Some of the most interesting work I have done during my federal services has been with the interagency “prisoner reentry” initiative. I’ve had many occasions to learn that what something looks like does vary a lot by where you are standing!
Thanks to David for calling attention to the ETS publication “Locked Up and Locked Out.” I think it is a great piece on the state of correctional education today. The conclusions that education and training behind bars can improve employment prospects and cut recidivism are well supported in a heavily footnoted chapter titled “The Prison Education Enterprise.” I won’t attempt to rehash that well developed and well-documented discussion.
Another interesting support important to those who handle State tax dollars is the work done by the “Washington State Institute for Public Policy.” This unit is a well-respected GAO like agency in the State of Washington. In January of this year, they posted tables of “Evidence Based Adult Corrections Programs, What Works and What Does Not.” Their tables show that adult education and vocational training in prison are effective. See: http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/pub.asp?docid=06-01-1201 But what do we mean by effective? Correctional education is not a miracle drug and does not “cure” individuals with criminal tendencies. The best predictor of future behavior is prior behavior. Individuals who have embarked on a life course that includes arrests, convictions, and various sanctions including incarceration are not easily launched on alternative pro-social live paths. Many would argue that we have come to rely too heavily on incarceration, and thus now face the challenge of how to deal with ever larger prison populations, even as our crime rate has trended downward. The prisons are overcrowded because of the staggering return rate for released prisoners – approaching two thirds.
A “prisoner re-entry movement” has taken hold in this country and is cutting across traditional political affiliations, recognizing that an approach best described as “lock em up for a long time in a harsh environment and then dump them out when they have finished their sentences” is leaving us with a large group of repeat offenders who are then requiring that more and more prison cells be constructed. A thoughtful and research informed approach to this issue suggests that inmates should be prepared for success in the community while they are still incarcerated and then that their attempts to attain a crime free life post incarceration needs various practical supports. (Of course criminal justice supervision and sanctions may also be required.) So education is an important tool in a program of criminal rehabilitation – not a be all and end all solution.
Question 3. Locked Up and Locked Out describes the declining investment in prison education. “Captive Students, an ETS report published in early 1996, reported a decline in the resources available for education and training in prisons, as well as a wide variation of resources among the states. According to the report, at least half of all state correctional institutions had cut their inmate educational programs over the prior five years.” “The decline has continued. From 1990 to 2000, the proportion of prison staff providing education fell from 4.1 to 3.2 percent of the total staff.” What has been the investment pattern since 2000? Further decreases? Level, increases? Has there been a “turnaround” as it was predicted there would be by Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project based in Washington, D.C.? What are the prospects for increased funding for prison education? -- David Rosen --
John Linton: Correctional education generally doesn’t have enemies or people lined up to oppose it. Some years back an editor of the journal published by the American Correctional Association Journal invited me to do a column in favor of prisoner education to run alongside another written in opposition. We had to change the format because the editor failed to find an author willing to develop the opposing piece. If education didn’t have a significant cost – correctional education would be doing great.
Unfortunately, education isn’t cheap – behind bars or in other settings. Those who decide where to commit our tax dollars are being tugged in a lot of directions at once. We’ve all heard education advocates say “let’s invest in education and slow spending on prisons.” In fact, most correctional expenses are mandated. Security, plant, utilities, food, and medical care – if you have the inmates, you have these costs. “Treatment” programs such as recreation, drug treatment, counseling, religion, work programs and education are discretionary. These make up a very small proportion of the corrections budget. If your population is increasing, and you are being told “hold down spending” – prison schools don’t always come out of that process intact. (Many fail to realize that the explosive costs of medical care has hit prison budgets just as they have other segments of our society. If you are told to hold spending to a 3% increase while medical costs are going up 10% -- how do you balance that budget?)
But to respond more directly to the question – we hear of increases one year in one State – decreases in two others. It is very difficult to track a trend. We don’t have great data on the investment in correctional education. Richard Coley and his fellow authors come down hard on the lack of good national data about correctional education. I think it is one of the most important conclusions of this publication. That we really don’t know trends in program availability, spending, enrollments and outcomes – this indicates to me that we need to do better.
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