EDUCATING PRISONERS PAYS OFF FOR SOCIETY

Getting tough on criminals and getting tough on crime are not necessarily
the same thing.

To some it may seem a distinction without a difference, but the truth is
that providing opportunities for those behind bars to re-enter society
successfully reduces recidivism, hence lowering the crime rate. It also
gives ex-offenders a better chance to become taxpayers, so there is a
fiscal payoff.

But at the height of the get-tough-on-criminals movement in the 1990s, the
emphasis on punishment came at the expense of rehabilitation. Congress, for
example, passed a law making people convicted of felonies ineligible for
Pell grants, the federal tuition assistance program for the poor. Here in
Virginia George Allen rode an "Abolish parole" proposal to the
governorship, and no-parole legislation took effect Jan. 1, 1995.

But more recently, Congress adopted federal legislation, providing about
$17 million for postsecondary education, mostly vocational, for inmates
under 25 who have less than five years to serve.

It this represents a start of a trend, the nation should welcome it. And a
new study may encourage more such investment both nationally and among the
states.

The study, which followed 3,000 prisoners in Maryland, Minnesota and Ohio,
found that three years after their release, 22 percent of the prisoners who
had taken classes returned to prison in comparison with 31 percent who had
not attended school while confined.

"We knew before this report," Nancy Grasnick, the Maryland superintendent
of schools, told The New York Times, "that education would reduce
recidivism, but we never quantitated it before. A study like this is just
going to strengthen, so much, the notion that it is in society's best
interest, both morally and financially, that these individuals get an
education."

And Stephen J. Steurer of the Correctional Education Association emphasized
that "the public safety question, the reduction in crime, is very
important. We [also] found that for every dollar you spend on education,
you save two dollars by avoiding the cost of reincarceration."

Drug treatment of addicted prisoners has also proved cost-effective.

Gov.-elect Mark Warner will probably face the fullest plate a governor has
faced in more than a decade when he is inaugurated in January. But
re-establishing an emphasis on rehabilitation and education in Virginia
prisons would help lower crime further and lower its heavy costs. It's an
opportunity not to be lost.