Introduction

Prison and Education

In addition to women, young people of color have also been increasingly abused by the police. Bob Herbert’s New York Times article “School-to-Prison Pipeline” ¹ is one of many recent writings that points to the latest trend of incarcerating minority children and teenagers. A 6-year-old girl in Florida was recently handcuffed and taken off to the county jail after she threw a tantrum in her kindergarten class. A 7-year-old boy in Baltimore was handcuffed and taken into custody for riding a dirt bike on a sidewalk. A 14-year-old girl was given a seven-year prison sentence for pushing a hall monitor; she was charged with “assault on a public servant.” All of these children were black. In comparison, Herbert points out, a 14-year-old white girl was given probation for intentionally burning down her family’s home.

Racism within our criminal justice system is not the only problem in these cases. In recent years there have been changes in public school policies, aiming for “zero tolerance” and criminalizing school misconduct. That policy, combined with a racist and sexist criminal justice system, creates a pipeline into prison for individuals from marginalized communities. The system then feeds itself, so that poor communities and criminalized individuals become further exploited. More young people are incarcerated. More money is invested in prisons and taken away from schools. Meanwhile, as our schools deteriorate, wealthy parents place their children in private schools and invest less in public schools, leaving poor children, whether deemed “criminals” or not, at a tremendous disadvantage. In New York State prisons, approximately 75 percent of prisoners enter prison without a high school diploma; in city jails, this figure leaps to 90 percent. Many contributors to “Women, Prisons and Change” conclude that a system that selectively targets the already marginalized should be dismantled and replaced by social programs that ensure basic rights for all, including the right to education.

Even if former prisoners manage to finish high school, attaining a post-secondary education has become nearly impossible for people convicted of a crime. In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement act into law, which made it impossible for people who had been convicted of a felony to receive Pell grants. Around the same time, 350 college programs within prisons were shut down. Today, only eight remain in existence nationwide. Michelle Fine spearheaded a study entitled “Changing Minds: The Impact of College in a Maximum-Security Prison” from 1997 to 2000 and found that college-in-prison transforms lives, reduces re-incarceration rates ², creates safer prisons and communities, and reduces the need for tax dollars spent on prisons. ³ Fine points out that the inmates in these college programs have much higher rates of employment upon release (60-70 percent), than those who do not (40 percent). Instead of these college-in-prison programs, inmates are increasingly pressured into sweatshop labor, at a pay rate as low as 21 cents per hour. Activist organizations compare these conditions to slavery. Many companies, including McDonald’s, Dell, Victoria’s Secret, Microsoft, 3Com, IBM, AT&T, and Toys “R” Us, to name but a few, are increasingly turning to prison labor instead of Mexican labor. Ironically, once prisoners re-enter society, they are denied employment even at the companies that had once exploited their labor.

Many of the contributors to this issue argue that criminalizing our youth must end, and that post-conviction penalties, which ensure punishment for life, must also be dismantled. Patricia Allard, Vivian Nixon, and the “Changing Minds” panelists, among other contributors, point out that the penalties that make re-entry into society nearly impossible extend beyond access to education and actually include a host of impediments. Not only are there legal barriers to employment, housing, and credit, but also civilian access to criminal records is increasingly available, creating an underclass of individuals who cannot fully re-enter society. Individuals who commit a crime, therefore, are punished for life, whatever the actual length of their sentence.

1. Herbert, Bob, “School-to-Prison Pipeline,” The New York Times (9 June 2007).[↑]
2. Women who participated in the college program while in prison had a 7.7 percent re-incarceration rate over 36 months compared to 29.9 percent for women who did not enroll in college while in prison.[↑]
3. For every 100 college students educated in prison, approximately $900,000 in tax dollars, now dedicated to prisons, can be saved over two years through reduced re-incarceration rates.[↑]