Why 240 hours of Mandatory Education in Prison

A look at Education in the Federal Prison System

• Literacy in Prison
• Correctional populations have lower educational attainment than the general population.
• There is a 40-60% illiteracy rate in Prison.
• 237,000- 306,000 of 766,000 inmates perform at the lowest literacy levels.

 GED STATISTICS
59 percent of Federal inmates lack a diploma as opposed to 18 percent of the general population.


EDUCATION MATTERS

• Education has been correlated with reduced recidivism.
• Inmates who completed GED requirements recidivated at a lower rate than inmates without their GED.
• GED completions increased a sense of self-esteem and offered a better chance at employability.

 Motivation and Mandatory Education

Opponents of mandatory education programs argue that it is improper to force adults to learn. Others argue that the sole purpose of prison education is to manage the population by keeping them busy with meaningless work.

However, proponents found that academic achievement was not affected by mandatory education. Supporters believe that it teaches the concept that there are prerequisites to achievement in life, one of which is education.

Why 240 Hours?

• There is little research available that supports a 240 hour time frame.
• Messemer and Valentine (2004) concluded that inmates gained 1.0 grade level in reading after 118.4 hours of instruction.
• Messemer and Valentine’s data suggests that 240 hours is not enough time for many inmates to complete the program.

Methodology
This study is designed to measure the amount of time it takes an inmate to successfully complete the literacy program and obtain a GED.

100 subjects will be randomly selected at USP Canaan.

HYPOTHESIS
It is hypothesized that inmates who score below an 8 will have a higher instructional mean score than the inmates who score above an 8 on the ABLE test.


Procedure

• Scores from the ABLE test will determine grade equivalents and placement.
   
• Inmates who score below an 8 will be referred to as low achievers LA.
   
• Inmates who score above an 8 will be referred to as academic high achievers A/HA.
   
• The number of hours that each inmate spent in the program will be calculated.
• Using the SPSS program, the means and standard deviations will be calculated for the two groups to determine the average number of hours obtained prior to passing the GED.

Significance
Since education and GED obtainment is linked with reducing recidivism, the research is worth undertaking.  Releasing inmates with a less than adequate education sets them up for failure and costs society billions of tax dollars.




Possible Outcomes
Increasing the mandatory time frame from 240 to 480 hours may yield more GED completions.


Limitations

• The study comprises of men only who are predominately African American or Hispanic.
• The results cannot be generalized outside of prison.
• The population is transient.
• Currently, BOP is converting from the ABLE standardized test to the TABE standardized test.