Experts: Inmates who pursue education more successful after incarceration

Donald Gray teaches inmates through IU’s School of Continuing Studies, and he said that, for the most part, inmates turn in work indistinguishable from the rest of students taking distance learning courses. \nSometimes, Gray said, it’s only a postal address that tips him off to the fact a student is incarcerated because he never sees his distance learning students. But every once in a while, an inmate turns in an assignment that reminds Gray what education can mean to those without easy access to campus. And this education often benefits both the students and the public, experts say. \nGray said an exam from one student was particularly telling.\n“One of the questions on an examination was ‘If you were going to set up a course using some of the books you had read, which would you read and why?’” Gray said. “He went through every book that he had read in the course, and he pulled out from each of the books a lesson that he said if he had learned, he would not be in the trouble that he got into. And I wrote back. I said, ‘This is the most interesting examination I’ve ever read.’ And then I got a letter from his mother. His mother said he had called her up, and he was in tears. No teacher had ever said anything that encouraging before.”\nGray said he thinks that kind of message is part of the reason he keeps teaching and why public universities such as IU have an obligation to serve the broadest student body possible.\n“The satisfaction is hearing people who would not get this learning unless it was offered in a different way,” he said. “And that’s certainly true of people who are in prison.”\nExperts say offering education programs in correction facilities reduces the chances of inmates returning to a life of crime, helps them get jobs and saves taxpayers money.\nJohn Nally, the director of education for the Indiana Department of Correction, said the planning division of the Department of Correction tracks recidivism, or the percentage of released inmates re-offending and returning to the Indiana Department of Correction. Statistically, Nally said, inmates who receive some sort of education while incarcerated are less likely to return to the Indiana Department of Correction. According to data from the planning division of the Indiana Department of Correction, which conducted its most recent study on recidivism, or the likelihood an offender will reoffend, in 2002, 39.3 percent of all offenders released that year recidivated. However, of inmates who received a time cut for completing a bachelor’s degree, only 18 percent recidivated.\nTo encourage students to take advantage of the available educational opportunities, inmates who complete a GED while incarcerated receive a half-year time cut off their sentences, those who complete an associate’s degree receive a year time cut and those who complete a bachelor’s degree receive a two-year time cut. \nIndiana inmates who take classes might benefit from the time cuts more than inmates in other states. Nally said that while many states have similar laws regarding time cuts, Indiana is unusual in the way time cuts are applied. Inmates serve half their original sentence if they meet behavioral standards while incarcerated, and most do. For example, if a judge sentences an inmate to 20 years, the inamte generally serves 10. After this initial time-reduction is made, the Indiana Department of Correction applies any educational time cuts earned to the shortened sentence. So an inmate sentenced in Indiana who completes a bachelor’s degree while serving a 20-year sentence might actually serve eight years. Other states apply time cuts to an inmate’s original, unreduced sentence and then reduce that number by half, which means inmates would serve more time.\nEducation programs also make sense economically, Nally said, because keeping an individual incarcerated costs about $56 a day, and such programs might be a way to keep offenders out of correctional facilities and prisons.\n“You’re taking people who are using tax dollars, and you’re converting them to people who are paying tax dollars,” he said. “Criminal policy is economic policy.”\nSusan Lockwood, who is responsible for the education of the Indiana Department of Correction’s adjudicated juveniles, agreed. She said it is important that offenders receive some sort of training while incarcerated because having job skills gives released inmates a chance to do something other than return to a life of crime. She said one of the most important factors of successful societal re-entry for inmates is getting a job. And, she said, “The only way you get it is if you’re educated.”