Online Education And Training In Tennessee And Illinois

There are significant advances of technology that are being utilized in online education in corrections of the past several years, however based on the results of the findings there is a void between the literature and the data. By way of society changes, community outlooks, financial shortcomings, and raised training requirements, law enforcement must make changes to its learning and training curriculum (Leal, 2009, p. 27).

With technology advancements in the training and education of our correctional officers, I hypothesized that the online education will benefit the correctional facility by cost savings as well as raise the education standards with correctional officers. The researchers at Missouri Western State University Criminal Justice

This is surprising since they are the two states with the highest budget. Illinois with a $1,222,900,000 budget and Tennessee with a budget of $899,270,500 based on the data collected from the agencies facilitators. There is discussion that Tennessee will be utilizing online educational and training in the future. Illinois is claiming to not have the budget that this time, and there is not any discussion of online education going forward. The Illinois facility coordinator continuously stated “we do not have the budget” when asked about current cost or future

50). The research collected from the states interviewed does not prove the literatures’ concept that there is benefits to cost analysis and budgets with the online education programs in correctional facilities as well as the increase in standards for the correctional officers. Out of the 6 states that concluded the use of online education, only two discussed the cost savings that they have experiences. These two states are Arkansas and