Quick Prison Follow-up

I don't intend to make this blog solely about my experiences working as a Corrections Officer, however, my dad did request that I comment about the average intelligence of inmates.

My personal experience was that inmates were difficult to categorize on a group level and that as is the case with almost all other prison metrics, the inmate population tends to be a slightly skewed mirror image of society.

Overall, I would say that the majority of inmates lack formal education beyond the high school level. According to a report I found from the National Institute for Correctional Education, during Fiscal Year 2001 25,648 inmates were identified as needing some sort of correctional education program. The inmate population for 2001 was not listed, however, the 2005 figure of 32,753 inmates was provided. Based on the recent rate of incarceration and summary reports I have seen, I would estimate that the 2001 inmate population was between 27,000 and 30,000 inmates. So roughly between 85 to 95 percent of inmates required educational programs in 2001 and at least 7,918 (roughly 31%) of those failed to meet 8^th grade equivalency.

I would say that is pretty good evidence that, at least in the case of Arizona, a significant portion of the inmate population is not as well educated as the public. However, I personally knew many inmates who were extremely bright and I suspect there are a great number of very intelligent prisoners in the system. So how did they get there? I would be willing to argue that intelligence is not what keeps people out of prison, rather, opportunity does.

Unfortunately for Arizona the rapidly growing prison population is putting such a strain on the State's budget that we are 49^th out of 50 in per pupil education spending. Which means that opportunities for the next generation are being squandered to pay for prisons today. That being said I think the situation is bound to get worse before it gets better and "we" smart people on the outside better figure out a way to fix it soon.