WHY NEGLECT EDUCATION FOR PRISONS?

Thursday, January 30, 2003 - No matter how irrational the course, how
futile the effort or how dire the projections, politicians continue to push
a tough-on-crime message because it sells, and elected officials commit
political suicide if they suggest anything less than unflinching toughness
toward criminals.

We're a nation of people who are terrified of crime. Our collective fear
gets stoked each evening when we turn on the news to watch a compendium of
horrible things that happened to other people, and each story carries the
theme "you don't want this to happen to you."

In fact, news anchors routinely turn from the main story to a sidebar on
how to protect yourself from the danger you just witnessed - as if two
planes colliding in the sky was more than a tragedy made spectacular by its
rarity; it also was something that might be looming in your future if
you're not careful.

At home, we put up fences and drive our cars with tinted windows straight
into our garages without talking to our neighbors. We double- lock our
doors, engage our alarm systems and settle into our protected bunkers to
watch the news.

This fear is the reason that we don't question the rising social and
economic costs of prisons. We have a lock- 'em-up-and-throw-away- the-key
mentality toward everything from violent crime to one-time mistakes to
nonviolent drug offenses. Our fear is the reason that, while the state of
Colorado suffers a budget shortfall every bit as devastating as the
drought, we want to keep sprinkling money on our prisons.

Our fear is the reason that, even as the legislature debates budget cuts in
child welfare services, disability payments for the needy and funding for
K-12 and higher education (to name a few), we still shrug when the governor
proposes increased spending for prisons.

This widespread public fear is the reason politicians won't sponsor
sentencing reforms that could save hundreds of millions of taxpayer
dollars; that could change the future of tens of thousands of lives
interrupted by prison; and that could reduce the impact on thousands of
families devastated by the effects of losing a father, a mother, a brother
or a sister to incarceration.

They say that adversity reveals your true character. What does it say about
us if we respond to the budget crisis by skimping on education and
splurging on prisons?

According to the state of Colorado website, our 2002-03 fiscal year
general-fund spending on public education in grades K-12 and higher
education is $2.4 billion and $798 million respectively. By comparison,
we're spending $495 million from the general fund on prisons.

(Additional revenue from cash funds and federal contributions helps finance
each of these functions, but for the moment, I'm just addressing the
general fund costs, because that's what the legislature is debating.)

On the surface, it appears that the best place to save money is in the
education budget, because it's among the state's biggest expenses. But
724,508 students attend Colorado public schools, so the general-fund cost
is $3,324 per pupil. According to the Colorado Commission on Higher
Education, 189,130 students were enrolled in the state's public colleges
this fall, which is a general-fund cost of $4,219 per student.

Prisons are a completely different story. The $495 million we spend is used
to hold just 17,367 convicts. That's $28,539 per inmate, or eight times the
general-fund cost of sending a child to school.

Our legislators are so afraid of appearing "soft" on crime that they'd
rather steal from education than deal with the disproportionate costs
associated with prisons.

Sociologists have long concluded that education is the quickest way to
escape poverty, and poverty is among the chief predictors of crime. By
short-changing education in favor of incarceration, our legislators will
ensure that more young people are ill-equipped to become productive
Colorado citizens - and more of them likely will end up in our prisons.

Former Denver Broncos player Reggie Rivers writes Thursdays on the op- ed page.