JAILS AT EXPENSE OF COLLEGES?

As state spent more on corrections, education lost out, new report
declares

Spending on the state's correctional system has jumped by more than
half over the last decade at the expense of public higher education,
according to a report released Wednesday by a think tank on criminal
justice issues.

Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the nonprofit, nonpartisan, San
Francisco-based Justice Policy Institute conducted the study comparing
state spending on corrections and higher education from 1988 to 1998.

It found that while general fund appropriations to corrections went up
60 percent, appropriations for higher education dropped 3 percent.

From 1993 to 1995, prison spending hit its peak, taking up 8.7 percent
of the general fund budget, the report states. During the same period,
higher education reached an all-time low, accounting for 12 percent of
the general fund.

Justice Policy Institute analysts said they had discovered a near
dollar-to-dollar correlation to the increase of spending on
corrections and the decrease in higher education.

Current higher education spending is about 13.2 percent of the $57.3
billion general fund budget, or $7.6 billion. About 7.8 percent of the
state's general fund goes toward corrections, about $4.4 billion.

The report will be presented Saturday at a three-day conference at
UC-Berkeley, "Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex." It
is being organized by longtime activist Angela Davis, a professor at
UC-Santa Cruz, as well as college students and former prisoners.

"The budget is the ultimate statement of priority," said Dan
Macallair, an institute analyst. "When you decide to increase one
portion of the budget and decrease another, there is a
connection."

Vincent Schiraldi, director of the Justice Policy Institute, said that
since corrections and higher education were both funded with
discretionary money from the general fund, they were constantly
competing for dollars.

Schiraldi said they were also targeting the same age group and
"symbolize the state's plans and hopes for the future. Are we going to
educate, or are we going to incarcerate? It's a hard question that
people have to pose now to the governor, (gubernatorial candidates)
and other officeholders."

But Sean Walsh, Gov. Wilson's press secretary, called the comparison
of spending on corrections and higher education ludicrous.

"It's so nonsensical . . . you don't see a lot of kids going to our
higher Ed institutions dropping out and going to prison," Walsh said.
"That's not where the prison population is coming from. The real issue
that apparently this group doesn't have the courage to address is the
fact that our K-12 system has failed far too many children,
particularly those in economically depressed and crime-ridden areas.

"They drop out in ninth or 10th grade because they have not been
prepared for school. We're investing literally billions of dollars to
change that."

According to the report, between 1990 and 1997 enrollment of black men
in state universities fell slightly while their incarceration numbers
rose dramatically. The result: For every African American male who
enrolled in the University of California or California State
University, 57 went to prison. The ratio of African American men in
prison to those in state universities is 5-1.

For Latino men, for every one who enrolled in state universities,
three went to prison.

"Just think about that from the standpoint of the future of young
black men in California," said Macallair. "If we saw these kind of
numbers with respect to white men, they would call a state of

emergency. We'd be funding education and prevention and (drug) treatment."

While university administrators acknowledge that spending on state
colleges fell in the early 1990s, they contend state funding is on the
upswing, and not just because there was a $4 billion budget surplus
this year.

"I feel optimistic in California that the governor and the Legislature
have gotten a wake-up call," said CSU Chancellor Charles Reed. "I
sense a turnaround where people realize California's future is going
to be tied to its higher education system. There's a lot of work to
do, a lot of make-up."

Larry Hershman, vice president for the budget at UC, conceded that
state universities had experienced budget difficulties in the last
decade, but expressed concern at the report's methodology.

"I'm a little bothered by looking only at corrections and higher
education together," he said. "You have to look at all of (the
budget). You can't just look at two categories, because when the
Legislature is looking at it, they're looking at the whole budget."
For more information about times and locations of seminars at the
Critical Resistance conference, call (510) 643-2094.

1998 San Francisco Examiner

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady