Education Cuts in Correctional Facilities Endanger Community Security, Oversight Body Reports

Decreases to educational programs within correctional institutions are disrupting inmates' employment and skill development options, eventually creating danger to public safety, according to a new analysis from a correctional watchdog agency.

Pattern of Reoffending Linked to Lack of Training

Repeat offenders often cause disorder in their neighborhoods due to the inability of correctional facilities to offer sufficient education and employment opportunities that could help disrupt the cycle of criminal behavior, the report indicated.

I hold serious concerns about the impact of real-terms education funding reductions on currently insufficient provision and about the absence of real desire and ambition for progress that this represents.”

Budget Cuts Threaten Reform Initiatives

Despite commitments to improve availability to learning, funding on frontline learning services in prisons is being cut by as much as 50%, per recent reports.

Although the total training allocation has remained unchanged, the expense of program agreements has increased significantly, according to prison governors.

• Just 31% of former inmates are working half a year after leaving prison
• Ninety-four of one hundred four inspected prisons were rated “inadequate” or “below standard” for purposeful activity
• Typical attendance in training programs was just 67% in inspected prisons

Inadequate Situations Impede Reform

Crowded conditions, a shortage of workshop facilities, machinery failures, and ageing facilities have worsened the situation, according to the report.

Many prisoners wait for weeks to be assigned an activity spot and are often given any is open, rather than instruction relevant to their career prospects upon release.

Although activities proceeded, full-day positions generally occupied inmates for just five hours per day, with many positions split into part-time slots to extend limited provision more widely.

Government Position and Upcoming Initiatives

The prison service has a duty to safeguard the public by making prisoners less inclined to reoffend when they are freed, but too often it is failing to fulfill this obligation.

Top administrators know that prisons, and in the end our society, are more secure if inmates are meaningfully engaged, and that training, skill development and employment play a vital role in encouraging inmates to change their behavior.

“We know that meaningful engagement can help to facilitate secure and proper prisons and have a positive impact on recidivism rates.”

Until leaders in the prison system take the provision of effective education and skill development more seriously, it is difficult to see how extremely high recidivism rates can be lowered.

Funding reductions are also likely to impede efforts to implement a new reward-driven correctional system that would enable inmates to earn reductions their sentence by finishing work, training and education programs.