Gisela Fosado, "Introduction" (Page 2 of 4)
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.
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