Essay On Prison Education

I have never before visited a prison nor have I met a prisoner in my entire life. Why should I care about someone whom I would rarely see? But these inmates are our brothers and sisters who may have made bad choices, but don’t want their mistakes to hold them back. Throughout my life, my once miserable and hopeless circumstances were transformed by education, and I am certain that the same principle can be applied to anyone, including inmates, despite our differences in how we responded to circumstances. It is true that prison takes nearly everything away from them – even their hopes and dreams. But they have the time to correct past mistakes. In doing so, if they can learn from the worst time of their lives, upon release, they will enter the

The first challenge is breaking the myth that the cost of providing facilities to educate the prisoners is exceptionally high. Many in the public might be tempted to think that college education for prisoners costs millions of dollars in addition to the money already being spent on prisons. This is because the detainees will not be in a position to contribute anything towards this form of education (Stoll, Raphael, & Project Muse, 2009, p. 45). Being one of the largest costs borne by taxpayers besides budgets in defence, healthcare, and retirement benefits, it costs somewhere between $52 billion and $70 billion dollars on average for U.S. taxpayers annually and $31,238 cost per inmate; However, cost of providing a college education for an incarcerated student only costs $ 2,000 to $4,000 a year (“Breaking the Prison Cycle”) and, in the longer term, a prison education proves to be far more beneficial than harmful in terms of cost-benefit analysis. According to a research by RAND Corporation, “a $1 investment in prison education reducing incarceration costs by $4 to $5, and those who receive a prison education have 43% less change of returning to prison than inmates who do not”(“Education and Vocational Training,” 2013). Even if prisoners are re-incarcerated, those who had correctional education costs $8,700 to $9,700 less than those who did not (“Education and Vocational Training,”