\nHowever, there is substantial evidence that low educational performance\ndoes increase likelihood of incarceration.\nFurthermore, parental involvement won’t be enough to deal with this,\nsince low-education prisoners tend to have low-education parents.\nHillary was right: it does take a village.\n
\n \nIn 1994 far more prisoners had reading difficulties than did the general public:\n\n\n \nWhat do those levels mean?\n \nAbout a third of prisoners have trouble reading even the simplest text:\n \nAnother third maybe can find information in a document:\n \nOnly about a fifth of prisoners can pull together information from different\nplaces in text:\n \nOnly about 1\/16 of prisoners can read and understand adult prose:\n \nAnd only 1\/200 of prisoners were capable of doing the research\nfor this blog entry:\n \nThe study doesn’t say how many prisoners could write at that level,\nbut it’s safe to say that there aren’t many Malcolm Xes in today’s\nprison system.\n \nFewer prisoners reached higher levels of schooling than did the\ngeneral population:\n \n \n \n…\n \n“About 20 percent of the prison population, compared with 45 percent of\nthe household population, has had some education beyond high school;\n49 percent of the prison population, compared with 24 percent of the\nhousehold population, did not complete either high school or a GED.”\n<\/blockquote>\n \nThe study doesn’t stop there:\n \nWhite prisoners demonstrate lower proficiencies than White adults in the\nhousehold population on all three literacy scales. On average, their prose\nproficiency is 16 points lower, their document proficiency 10 points\nlower, and their quantitative 20 points lower than the proficiencies\nof the White household population. On the other hand, the proficiency\nscores of Black and Hispanic prisoners tend to be about the same as those\nof their counterparts in the household population. The exception occurs\namong Hispanic adults on the document scale, where prisoners demonstrate\nlower average proficiency than adults in households (198 compared with\n213, respectively).\n<\/blockquote>\n \nThe study reported regression analysis for sex, race, age, and education\nbetween the prison and outside populations:\n \nThe study notes that prisoners’ parents tend to have lower levels\nof education than the general population.\nSo parental involvement is good, but probably won’t be not enough\nto address this problem.\nCommunity involvement is also necessary.\nYou can go read to a child.\n \n\n \nThe study also says that 2\/3 of prisoners take educational or vocational classes,\nand many prisoners get a GED while in prison,\nbut it would seem a lot less expensive and more effective to educate\npeople instead of locking them up.\n \nFurthermore, community involvement helps:\n \nSource:\n\nLiteracy Behind Prison Walls,<\/a>\nProfiles of the Prison Population from the\nNational Adult Literacy Survey,\npublished by National Center for Education Statistics,\nInstitute for Education Sciences,\nU.S. Department of Education, October 1994.\nAnother survey was taken in 2003, and\n\nwas supposed to be released in 2006.<\/a>\nThat second study would permit examination of effects of education on prisoners\nover time.\n \nHowever, we already know that education can help prevent incarceration.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s a widespread factoid claiming that multiple states (maybe California, Arizona, Indiana, or Virginia) decide how many prison cells to build according to second or third grade reading levels. This is an urban legend, debunked by Washington Post, DailyKos, and numerous other investigators. Lots of people have requoted this factoid, from Colin Powell to Hillary […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[15,72],"tags":[6002,8705,6003,8730,1851,75],"class_list":["post-2776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-incarceration","tag-colin-powell","tag-education","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-incarceration","tag-literacy","tag-prison"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-IM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Prison](\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2619\/4005186892_056434ffa5.jpg\")
<\/a>\n\n“Prisoners are more likely than the household population to perform in\nthe lower levels of the three scales (table 2.3). About one in three\nprison inmates performs in Level 1 on the prose scale, compared with\none in five of the household population. About 33 percent of prison\ninmates and 23 percent of the household population perform in Level\n1 on the document scale, and 40 percent of prisoners and 22 percent of\nhousehold respondents on the quantitative scale. Thus, the differences in\npercentages performing in Level 1 are 10 for the prose and document scales\nand 18 for the quantitative scale. … Thus, prisoners consistently\ndemonstrate lower proficiency than the household population on all three\nscales, whether measured by the distribution of prisoners in the levels\nof each scale or by their average proficiency scores.”\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n“Thirty-one percent of prison inmates perform in Level 1 on the prose\nliteracy scale, 33 percent are in this level on the document scale,\nand 40 percent on the quantitative scale (table 2.3). This means that\napproximately 237,000 to 306,000 of 766,000 prison inmates perform in\nthe lowest level on each of the literacy scales. Prison inmates at this\nlevel may be able to read short pieces of text to find a single fact,\nenter personal information on a document, or add numbers that are\nset up in a column format. Other inmates in Level 1, however, do not\ndemonstrate the ability to perform even these fairly straightforward\nliteracy tasks.”\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n“Performing in Level 2 are about 37 percent of prison\ninmates on the prose scale, 38 percent on the document scale, and\n32 percent on the quantitative scale — about 245,000 to 291,000\nprisoners. Prisoners at this level on the prose scale can generally\nmake low-level inferences based on what they read and integrate two\nor more pieces of information. Those in Level 2 on the document scale\ncan locate a piece of information in a document in which plausible\nbut inexact information is present and can integrate information from\nvarious parts of a document. Prisoners in Level 2 on the quantitative\nscale can correctly add, subtract, multiply, or divide simple numbers\nfound in a text.”\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n“Between 22 percent and 26 percent of prisoners — about 169,000 to 199,000\nprisoners in all — could perform literacy tasks in Level 3. Prisoners in\nthis level on the prose scale could integrate information from relatively\nlong or dense text, and those in this level on the document scale could\nintegrate multiple pieces of information found in documents. Prisoners\nin Level 3 on the quantitative scale could perform arithmetic operations\nusing two or more numbers found in printed material.”\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n“About 6 percent of inmates, or about 46,000, could successfully perform\nLevel 4 tasks on the prose scale and, thus, could synthesize information\nfrom lengthy or complex passages. Four percent, about 31,000, are in\nLevel 4 on the document scale and are able to make inferences based on\ntext and documents. Six percent perform in Level 4 of the quantitative\nscale; they can perform sequential arithmetic operations using numbers\nfound in different types of displays.”\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n“Less than 0.5 percent of prison inmates perform in Level 5 on the\nprose and document scales and about 1 percent on the quantitative\nscale. To perform in Level 5 on the prose scale, one must contrast\ncomplex information found in written materials or make high level\ninferences or search for information in dense text. Level 5 on the\ndocument scale requires readers to use specialized knowledge and search\ncomplex displays for particular pieces of information. To achieve\nthis level on the quantitative scale, respondents must determine the\nfeatures of arithmetic problems either by examining text or by using\nbackground knowledge and then perform the multiple arithmetic operations\nrequired. Very few inmates, 8,000 or fewer, perform in this level.”\n<\/blockquote>\n
![\"Prison](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3503\/4004421681_e8db522707_o.png\")
<\/a>\n\n“As shown in table 2.2, the prison population attained lower levels\nof education than the household population. Greater percentages of\nprisoners than householders attained less than a high school diploma;\n14 percent of prisoners have 0 to 8 years of education, compared with\n10 percent of householders, and 35 percent of prisoners have 9 to 12\nyears of education compared with 14 percent of householders.”\n
\nOn all three literacy scales, White prisoners demonstrate higher average\nliteracy skills than Black prisoners, who show greater proficiency than\nHispanic prisoners (table 2.5). The proficiency scores of White prisoners\nare, on average, 28 points higher than those of Black prisoners and\n62 points higher than scores of Hispanic prisoners on the prose scale;\nthe scores of Black prisoners are 34 points higher than those of Hispanic\nprisoners. On the document scale, the proficiency scores of White inmates\nare an average of 38 points higher than the scores of Black inmates,\nand Black inmates’ scores are 34 points higher than Hispanic inmates’\nscores. On the quantitative scale, the proficiency scores of White\ninmates are 44 points higher on average than those of Black inmates and\n66 points higher than those of Hispanic inmates. These differences among\ninmates mirror differences among adults in the household population, in\nwhich the proficiency scores of White adults are 49 to 63 points higher\nthan those of Black adults and the scores of Black adults are 12 to 22\npoints higher than those of Hispanic adults, on average.\n
\nWhen the variables are held constant, there is no significant statistical\ndifference in performance on all three scales between the prison and\nthe household populations. The characteristic having the most effect\non performance is level of education, followed by race\/ethnicity. Thus,\nwhen comparisons are made between the prison and household populations,\nit is important to remember that differences in overall performance are\nmost likely attributable to differences in the demographic composition of\nthe two populations. On the other hand, the differences in demographics\nare important and should not minimize the significance of the overall low\nperformance of the prison population, which comprises many individuals\nwho demonstrate the need for improved literacy skills.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo for a given literacy level, prisoners were about\nas proficient as the outside population. However, far more\nprisoners are at lower levels of literacy.\n
\nThe demographic composition and educational attainment of the prison\npopulation differ significantly from that of the household population,\nwith the prison population more likely to be male, minority, young,\nand less educated.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo it looks like education would be one good way to keep people,\nespecially young black men, out of prison.\n
![\"prisonstudies-org.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.quarterman.com\/images\/prisonstudies-org.jpg\")
<\/a>\nThis is all in addition to the general problem that \nthe U.S. locks up more total people and more people per population than any\nother country in the world.<\/a>\n44 percent of prisoners reported they were serving time for violent crimes,\n26 percent said they were in for drug offenses, and 18 percent for property offenses.\n\nDrug offenders demonstrate lower prose and document proficiencies than\nproperty offenders, but about the same quantitative proficiency. Violent\noffenders also demonstrate lower proficiencies than property offenders\non the document scale. The proficiencies of other types of offenders\nare not statistically different from one another.\n<\/blockquote>\nSo instead of locking up drug offenders, how about educate them.\nAnd education would probably reduce the number of violent offenders.\n
\nIn addition to working or taking education and vocational classes,\nprisoners in most cases have the opportunity to join groups while in\nprison. As shown in table 4.6, 53 percent of prisoners reported joining\ngroups of various types. The three most frequently joined groups are\naddiction (29 percent), religious (26 percent), and life skills (20\npercent) groups. The proficiency scores of prisoners who joined groups\nare significantly higher than those of nonjoiners on all three scales. In\naddition, prisoners who are involved in three or more groups (17 percent)\ndemonstrate significantly higher average proficiencies than those who\njoined only one or two groups, except on the quantitative scale where\nthe most involved prisoners perform about the same as those involved in\ntwo groups. When the proficiency scores of those in the various groups\nare compared with the scores of those who did not join groups, only the\nproficiencies of those in religious groups are not significantly higher\non all three scales. When proficiencies among the various groups are\ncompared, generally prisoners demonstrate about the same proficiencies\non the three scales, regardless of the type of group joined.\n<\/blockquote>\nEducation needs to be a community experience.\n