Should Prison Inmates Get Grants to Pay for Their Education?
By Paul Crowley | Observer Contributor
Courtesy photo / flickr.com/Inmate_Sasha_#191275
Prisoners. Inmates. Convicts. The incarcerated. They break the law and we put them in jail to punish them and to deter other people from making the same mistake. We also seek to rehabilitate them.
We incarcerate 25% of the world’s prisoners. One and a half million people were in state or federal jail in 2014. 93% of these people will return to our communities. We certainly punish them – especially since the get tough days of the 1990’s. It is hard to measure a deterrence strategy, but since our prisons are swollen with inmates, maybe we do not deter enough. But why bother to spend the money to rehabilitate them?