PSE vs DOC

Well hello there! Welcome to Sunday Morning Coffee, where we talk about education, correctional education, and all things change (change for the better, of course). “Correctional education” is an interesting term, I think. For me, it means educational instruction that’s happening inside a carceral space with students who are incarcerated. To others, it means correcting ‘inmate’ behavior. Whichever POV you take, our prison system, as a whole, doesn’t do all that great at either of those. This intersection of formal education and incarceration is fascinating to me. It seems ripe with opportunity (not taken often enough), and it’s also a huge statement about U.S. society.

What does that mean (you ask)?

The United States has long been known for having a high incarceration rate, with a staggering number of individuals behind bars (around 2 million; a 500% increase over the past 40 years). In recent years, there’s been increasing attention around the need for criminal justice reform and a rethinking of the way we approach punishment and rehabilitation. One striking aspect of this debate is the fact that the number of prisons in the U.S. far outnumbers the number of universities. It’s not difficult to understand what this says about our society.

According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 4,298 degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the United States in the fall of 2019. This includes 2-year and 4-year colleges, universities, and graduate schools. In contrast, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, there were 5,265 prisons and jails in the United States as of 2021.

This disparity is particularly stark when you consider the purpose of these institutions. Universities are centers of learning and knowledge, dedicated to fostering intellectual growth and critical thinking. They’re places where individuals come to expand their minds, explore new ideas, and prepare themselves for successful careers and fulfilling lives. Prisons, on the other hand, are places of punishment and confinement. They’re designed to remove individuals from society and to prevent them from causing harm.

Of course, it’s not a simple matter of comparing universities and prisons in terms of their purpose and value. There are complex social and political factors at play that have led to the proliferation of prisons in the U.S. These include a focus on punitive measures in the criminal justice system, a lack of investment in education and social programs that could prevent crime, and racial and economic inequalities that contribute to the over-representation of certain groups in the prison population.

The first university in the U.S. was Harvard, established in 1636 in Cambridge, MA, and the first prison was built in 1720 in York, ME. As I watched this week’s royal coronation in the U.K., it brought home to me the fact that as a nation, we of course modeled everything after Brits, including higher education and a penal system. We put our own spin on it, though, since the folks establishing these systems were largely Puritans with a level of religious fervor that may or may not have shaped the British systems (mostly not). Harvard, for instance, was established in part in anticipation of needing to have trained clergy in the new Common Wealth, and we can’t get around the fact that our prison system was designed with a healthy dose of religious aptitude toward the punishment of crime.

In a time and a place where prisons outnumber the institutions of higher education, it’s not much of a stretch to say it suggests that we’re more focused on punishing individuals than on educating them and providing them with the tools they need to succeed. It also underscores the urgent need for criminal justice reform that takes a more compassionate and holistic approach to the issue of crime and punishment. I also think we should reconsider the terms we use to describe these institutions as well. Are they really ‘correctional’? Is it really ‘justice?’

It feels like the conversations about the need to shift our priorities and create more opportunities for people before, during, and after incarceration have increased and reached levels that weren’t really happening a couple of decades ago. Hats off to the people across the country who keep fighting the good fight to raise awareness of the need for more education and less punishment (which isn’t decreasing crime rates anywhere, by the way, no matter how punitive).

Build classrooms, not prisons. Open prison doors to educational institutions. Educators, walk through those doors.

Enjoy your morning, including your beverage of choice. I hope it’s the beginning of a wonderful week. In your gratitude journal (which I KNOW you’re keeping), take a minute to be grateful for your freedom, and for teachers that have hopefully inspired you, and for human compassion and ingenuity that no doubt can create something better than what we have.

Cheerio! And welcome to the King Charles era. :)