Estefany Villafan
Professor Ronald Richardson
ENG 114 - A2
21 October 2014
Affordable Higher Education: Fantasy or Reality? “Jerry Brown’s 2012-13 budget allocated nearly $1 billion more to prison spending than to higher education”, reported Hansook Oh and Mona Adem in “California Budgets $1 Million More to Prisons than Higher Education and Leaves Students Hanging.” Many students either cannot attend college or drop out because they cannot afford to continue their higher education. College students are not succeeding in college and the United States is falling behind in the percentage of people having a degree beyond high school. The whole issue of prison systems in California and in the United States is talked about extensively but to
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Let us look at the facts: California has the greatest number of prisoners. According to Oh and Adem California’s higher education received 13 percent less state funding in 2011 than it did in 1980, while funding for prisons expanded 436 percent during the same period.” A teen in California receives a large amount of college guidance. There are supportive teachers and guidance counselors who will help teens get into college however once they are in college they face student debt with no one to get help from. Similarly there are juvenile delinquency facilities being built for millions of dollars. In both these instances who loses? The student and the juvenile delinquent. The system is set up that if people succeed they go to college and pay high loan interests and pile on debt and if they don’t they can end up in jail from age 16 and on adding to the prison population, helping build more prisons and in both situations making someone else very rich. Children are the future, which is why the government should use their money for education and not for prisons. If the government spend more on education the cycle of going to prison and not school will be broke. We need to build an economy that does not rely on the failures of others to make money. An economy that knows no other benefit than that of education. There will be more opportunities for those students who cannot afford to pay for higher education, they will be more willing to look into colleges and not turning away from college because its out of their financial reach. As the article,“California Budgets” explains that students should not be made responsible for the economy and having access to affordable education should be a right for every American. Universities and prisons are in competition to get the more funds but this should be clear to politicians and school officials that education is more important. It is simple;
UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies reports that the California Prison system "is the third largest penal system in the country, costing $5.7 billion dollars a year and housing over 161,000 inmates." (2012, p.1) The number of prisons in the State of California is reported to have "tripled…since 1980." (UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, 2012, p.1) Reported are controversies relating to expansion of the prison system, climbing costs, and poor management in addition to abuse of inmates. (UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, 2012, paraphrased)
During the 1970’s, the tough on crime movement contributed to a drastic increase in punishment for lesser crimes and led a massive increase in imprisonment, even though the crime rates stayed the same (Gascon 2014). It is disputed that even though the movement was attractive to voters, it is doing more harm than good. Ever since the 1960’s, the amount of individuals detained has increased roughly about ten times than normal (Gascon 2014). Expanding a prison population requires more places, such as prisons and jails, to detain prisoners and California had built “22 new prisons in just 30 years” (Gascon 2014). Building new prisons and detaining more prisoner’s costs money and this money will come out of taxpayers. Newt Gingrich and B. Wayne Hughes Jr. said in an editorial that “prison is for people that we are afraid of, but we have been filling them with many folks we are just mad at.” They also state if the proposition is passed it will bring some light on the face that over $60,000 is spent on one inmate alone per year, while less than $10,000 is spent on each student in schools (Gingrich and Hughes 2014). The American Civil Liberties Union, the Sentencing Project, and the Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice are also in favor of the proposition. Some of these groups agree with Gingrich and Hughes statements, the money
In Texas, the average cost of sending a student to school for one academic year is approximately $7,246 while sending a child to jail for that same one year is $67,890. The current statistics of children ending up in a correctional facility are: a black boy 1:3, a latino boy 1:6, a white boy 1:17 and a black girl 1:17, a latino girl 1:45 and a white girl 1:111. In this astonishing breakdown
“Building a Prison to a College Pipeline”, is an article of allowing prisoners the ability to get a college degree. President Obama suggested this idea to lower the risk of recidivism (when a criminal relapse into his life of crime or illegal actions after being punished). The problem that is conveyed is that people (mostly republicans) believe that it is unfair and takes opportunities from others; mostly the “good samaritans”. However, this article clears up that argument by claiming, “This never pits one group over another, and it’s not robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s just trying to have a few more people have access to what could be a life-chance-forming opportunity.”
Our government continues to prioritize funding prisons over classrooms. Adolescents who have access to a better education and more pleasant
The United States tax payer spends, on average, $60,000 per year per prisoner incarceration. Along with that, state and federal spending has grown 400% in the last 20 years and is among the fastest growing line items in state and federal budgets. As a result more tax payers are in inquiry about whether or not their money is providing the best public safety return on their investment. Recently the governor of New York set in motion a program that will offer free college education to inmates and will require using tax payer’s dollars in which he believes is a worthy investment. Should this college education
Prisons are expensive facilities to operate. Each year, California prisons house more than 100,000 inmates (Graves, “Fewer State Prisoners, Higher Cost Per Inmate”). While the number of inmates has been steadily decreasing, spending per inmate has skyrocketed to about $60,000 from $33,000 in 1995 (Dean, “CA Spending Per Inmate Rising Faster Than Spending Per Child”). That is about six billion dollars spent on prisoners alone. The government is wasting more and more taxpayer money on keeping inmates inside the prisons. With about 58% of ex-convicts returning to prison within
The reports will also address how much College for All will cost taxpayers and what the return on this investment will be. The overall goal of this endeavor is to ensure that the United States has the skilled workforce and educated citizenry to achieve inclusive prosperity and economic growth. College for All is radically student centric and will significantly increase the college attainment among students from low and moderate income families.
California has one of the most dysfunctional and problematic prison system in US. Over the last 30 years, California prison increased eightfolds (201). California Department of Correctional and Rehabilitation (CDCR) does little to reform prisoners and serve as human warehouse rather than a correction institution. California's prison system fails the people it imprisons and society it tries to protect. In many cases, California's prison system exacerbates the pre-existing problems and aids in the formation of new problems for prisoners. This paper discuses the criminogenic effects of overcrowding, and reduction/elimination of programs and how it negatively affects California and the ballooning prison population and possible remedies.
The proliferation of prison overcrowding has been a rising concern for the U.S. The growing prison population poses considerable health and safety risks to prison staffs and employees, as well as to inmates themselves. The risks will continue to increase if no immediate actions are taken. Whereas fighting proliferation is fundamentally the duty of the U.S. government, prison overcrowding has exposed that the U.S. government will need to take measures to combat the flaws in the prison and criminal justice system. Restructuring the government to combat the danger of prison overcrowding, specifically in California, thus requires reforms that reestablishes the penal codes, increases the state’s budget, and develops
With more prisons and jails being built, there is more chances for people to go to prison. In the film Broken on All Sides, a previous guard explains his views on the matter of overcrowding in prisons, “We just keep building jails and more people come to jail” (Pillischer). By investing money into education and rehabilitation, rather than building new jails and prisons, this would aid in the incarceration rates, and recidivism rates. For example, education research provides that 6.2 million young adults were high school dropouts in 2007, and the majority of people incarcerated, 2.3 million, are people who have not completed education (Thompson). The rates of incarcerated people are astonishing, but so is the number of people who are incarcerated without a complete education. Providing poor communities with better school systems and help the juveniles complete their education would reduce the amount of African Americans being
These shortfalls were a result of severe overcrowding within California’s thirty-three state prisons. At its peak in 2006, California’s prisons were filled with approximately 172,000 inmates. However, these prisons were designed to hold about 80,000 individuals (Vicini, 2011, 3). At that point, State prisons were filled at 215% over capacity. Because of overcrowding, prison inmates faced chronic and severe shortages in basic medical and mental health care services (Vicini, 2011, 1). Despite attempts by the CDCR and the legislature to reduce the prison population between 2006 and 2011, the
In 2010, state and federal prisons spent 80 million dollars collectively on incarceration. (Office of the Attorney General, 2014). Mandatory minimum sentencing generally doesn’t target the money spent on mandatory minimum sentencing would be better spent directed towards more serious criminal offenses or towards rehabilitative programs to prevent recidivism. The U.S. accounts for only 5% of the world’s population, yet it has 25% of the world’s prison population, making it the world’s largest jailer (American Civil Liberties Union). Extending the length of prison stays doesn’t necessarily mean lower crime rates. Prisoners are expensive. In 2005, the average operating cost per prisoner was $23,876 (PEW Charitable Trusts, 2008). Prisoners require beds, food, medical and dental care, and mental health services which all come out of taxpayer dollars. It is much cheaper to provide rehabilitative services to prevent recidivism to nonviolent drug offenders than to incarcerate them for extended periods of time. Overpopulation in prisons also leads to overtime costs for officers to fulfill staff vacancies. In 2006, at least $25,000 was made by 15% of the corrections workforce in California (PEW Charitable Trusts, 2008). Some states have cut spending on higher education and funneled more money towards fighting the War on Drugs. In 2007, five states spent more money on corrections
While the states fall short to fulfill their budgetary needs for safety, infrastructure, and education short comes, the prison population has increased each year and its annual budgets. However, in the television show on CNN discussing the failure of our prison system, “In 2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons, versus $5.7 billion on higher education.” (Zakaria , 2012)
Going to school and trying to afford it can be a financially draining experience, and I know that from experience. Our government has made many relevant changes thus far to better support students, but much more can still be done. With rising tuition costs and not enough government aid, more and more students are forced to take out loans in order to pay for continuing education. These loans later become a huge financial burden, some totaling near $30,000. If the dream of a college education is dependent upon access and affordability, how are young people supposed to continue their education and plan a future, when the cost of tuition is through the roof? Because higher education supports our economy, the government should be expected