Daniel Harr A Plea From Behind Bars Analysis

There are some positive sides of supplying felons with knowledge and training. Firstly, it helps criminals to rehabilitate and become contributing members of society. If offenders

     “It is not a surprise to see that prisoners all have a low education level. I guess a more educated person has enough sense not to be involved with crime…the relationship between crime and education is easy to see when viewing these facts” (Cordes 1). This is the view of most people when asked why people are in prison. People simply say that criminals were ill educated. As hard as we may try, we cannot do a lot about what happens before they enter prison, but there are many programs inside prisons to help rehabilitate them for when they leave the prison.

More than 90 percent of prisoners return to the community within a few years (otherwise our prisons would be even more overcrowded than they already are). That is why it is vitally important how we treat them while they are incarcerated.” So basically our system of just throwing criminals in a cell is doing absolutely nothing for them, and we need to find a way to teach them and help them overcome their wrong-doings. Otherwise the crime problem in this country will never go away. We’ll just put people away, only to have them come back and do something worse, and so on. Something needs to change.

The article "Educated Prisoners Are Less Likely to Return to Prison" by James Vacca (2004), deals with the subject of if prisoners receive the right type of educational programs in prison their risk of recidivism goes down immensely. Vacca states that "Since 1990, the literature has shown that prisoners who attend educational programs while they are incarcerated are less likely to return to prison following their release (2004)." Vacca cites many examples of the types of educational courses the inmates should have to help them deal with their emotions and problems. The educational programs help the inmates deal with their social skills, encourage artistic development, and teach techniques on how to deal with their emotions (Vacca, 2004). These programs would help inmates deal with the issues that put them in prison in the first place and knowing these skills can then help keep them out of prison in the future. I find these arguments to be sound because Vacca shows the research from other people all over that concurs with his own claims of how these programs can keep recidivism at bay (2004). He cites many examples and goes into depth about why inmates may be in prison and what these programs will do to correct their problems and turn them into a real

The correctional educational programs plays a role in reducing recidivism. Recidivism remains high nationally, with four in 10 inmates returning to prison within three years of release. Most inmate that goes to prison had less education than the general population. I feel that it's

Inmates need to be educated and rehabilitated in order to be released back into society. If prisoners receive a good education they are less likely to commit misconduct in the future. The Three State Recidivism Study

While in prison, education would provide a crucial key for inmate rehabilitation. Part of that rehabilitation can be in the form of education. Education in the prison system generally geared

recidivism do not rely with a criminal predisposition to commit crime, but with their lack

Lacking an education, poverty, unemployment, crime, imprisonment is an intergenerational cycle, and the education is the best way to help to break this cycle. Lewen said that our students’ kids have a 50 percent likelihood of going to prison if they lack the education, and I totally agree with her about that point of view. I believe if the children can get a complete education, it will help minimize the chance of going to prison. By contrast, some of the teenagers, young people or adults lack education, and they make crime because of under-education. However, if they can get education inside the prison, they can get a job when they release from jail, and that means the intergenerational cycle of crime break. Probably, some people think inmates

Most prisons provide the average high school education; thus, inmates can be academically prepared. In the GED Program, inmates participate and engage in their studies to make academic progress. The GED Program provides inmates the educational knowledge preparing them to overcome the difficult obstacles that come after being released from prison. GED inmates are motivated to break the cycle of recidivism to successfully integrate back into society. Lahm (2009) explains, “…the majority of research regarding prison education programs center around their effect upon recidivism…” but educational programs most likely provide statistical results from a small percentage of inmates from the total population (p. 39). With limit inmates and resources, the GED Programs provide positive results.

However, with such little access to post-secondary education in prison, it is questionable how seriously prisons want to see change. While incarcerated, most people would be lucky to see any kind of GED (General Education Diploma) classes, but even those are lack-luster and irregular (Ross & Richards, 2002). While the completion of a GED is important, post-secondary education is truly the best step to take for education while incarcerated, because the higher education a person can get, the less likely they will recidivate (Hall, 2015). The American criminal justice system generally acknowledges a problem when it comes to mass incarceration and overcrowding in prisons, yet as the years pass, we are cutting these kinds of helpful programs rather than initiating more of them due to continued political and public rhetoric to be tough on crime. Re-incarceration is not working as a form of rehabilitation presently, yet that is the only method we use. It traps people in a never-ending cycle of re-arrest, which increases the likelihood of re-conviction, and that immediately places someone in prison again (Hall,

Why do prisoners deserve free education if in prison for committing a crime? Is there a screening process that determines which prisoner gets the education? Will these prisoners who earn a degree get out of prison and be productive members of society and pay it forward? This subject can be touchy with most, especially the victims of the crimes and tax paying members of society. When a person is in prison for a crime they can receive free education in some states. “An inmate’s ability to make it on the outside depends on whether he is returning to a stable family, whether he has mental health or substance abuse issues, and on his education and employment-related skills.”( Skorton and Altschuler.2013.Forbes Magazine). Having an inmate get a

State prison and county jail inmates who receive general education and vocational training are significantly less likely to return to prison after release and are more likely to find employment than peers who do not receive such opportunities. Researchers found that inmates who participate in correctional education programs have 43 percent lower odds of returning to prison than those who do not. The estimate is based on studies that carefully account for motivation and other differences between correctional education recipients and non-recipients.

As crime rates increase in the United States, so does the number of ex-offenders who are released back into our community. Government officials have tried to find solutions to deal with the problem of ex-offenders recidivating, so that our communities could be safe. Some of these solutions include Educational and Vocational programs inside prisons. But these programs have caused fueling debates within the criminal justice field in whether these programs are effective or not. Whether one agrees or not that these programs actually work, there is a general agreement that we to find some alternatives to this issue.

As Michael Neminski states: . Furthermore, in prisons there are many experienced criminals who do lead the younger ones. Therefore, they teach them how to be better criminals. Unfortunately, it is not the other way around, i.e., when released from prison, instead of being better persons for the society, and, what is more, for themselves, they get at being proficient criminals. Not only is this true in some countries of the world, but it is also a fact globally known. In addition, many investigations have been made on this issue. For instance, Donald T. Hutcherson II states: .On one hand, prisoners may be led into the "darker" world due to their being afraid of the most powerful "leaders" in prison. Thus, they might become even more dangerous than the time when they were imprisoned. On the other hand, many prisoners are eager to improve their skills which are the reason why they are behind bars. Anyway, none of these ways lead to real community-friendly improvement. Therefore, an immediate transformation from classical prisons into rehabilitation centres is