WHY BOOKS THROUGH BARS?
As of 1991, the United States has over 1.35 million prisoners in prisons and jails. (Bureau of Justice Statistics: 1991 Survey of State Prison Inmates).
The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any Western nation - 6 to 10 times the rate of most industrialized nations.
Incarceration is EXPENSIVE - each prison cell costs more than $50,000 to build and each prisoner costs $20,000 a year.
The national cost of state and local corrections is $36 billion a year. The Bureau of Prisons, the federal prison system, is the largest part of the Department of Justice's budget. From 1988 to 1998, New York State's prison budget increased by $761 million, while its support for public universities declined by $615 million and tuition at those institutions roughly doubled.
Incarceration is INEFFECTIVE: The historical recidivism rate of 60% of ex-convicts returning to prison within three years has not changed, despite a nearly nine-fold increase in the prison population.
EDUCATION IS EFFECTIVE - the more education that a prisoner receives, the less likely that s/he will return to prison. Studies in the Federal and New York prison systems showed a consistent proportional relationship between higher education and lower recidivism.
Correctional education programs (literacy, adult basic education, GED, vocational and post- secondary) reduce recidivism. Quality education programs have consistently reduced recidivism by 16-62%. (M.E. Batiuk, The State of Post-Secondary Education in OH. Journal of Correctional Education Vol. 48, issue 2, 6/97, pp. 72)
In New York, only 26.4% of the prisoners who earned a degree returned to prison compared to 44.6% of those who participated in a college program but did not complete a degree.
(David C. Clark, Analysis of Return Rates of Inmate College Program Participants.
NYS Department of Correctional Services, August 1991)
The Rand Corporation concluded that only $1 million more spent on education and drug treatment would reduce crime 15 times the amount that expanding mandatory minimum sentences would.
However, despite the massive evidence available, education in prison is atrocious and is actually being cut out of many prisons.
California, Florida, and several other states spend more on corrections than they do on education.
1991 survey of prison inmates found that approximately 59% had a high school diploma or its equivalent. (Bureau of Justice Statistics: 1991 Survey of State Prison Inmates. NCJ-136949)
10% of NYC inmates have a high school or equivalent diploma. (Alton R. Waldon, Jr., Unhealthy Choice, NYS Senate Report, April 1996)
75% of NYS prisoners have no high school diploma. 40% of these prisoners cannot read. (Ibid.)
A high percentage of inmates from NYC come from poverty neighborhoods. Many come from an area served by eleven of the city's worst schools. (Ibid.)
Pell grants were eliminated for prisoners in 1994 which ended college programs to pay for more cots, razor wire, and guns. Many of the new Texas prisons not only have no education- they have no libraries.
Many prisoners in segregation are allowed no books. Isolation and sensory deprivation of this nature have been shown to lead to psychosis.
More and more prisoners writing to Books Through Bars tell us that we are their only source of reading material.
So, please FEEL FREE to donate books, money, or time to our organization!
