States Spend 4X on Prisoners than Students

Do Prisoners achieve their goals better than the products of our educational system?

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States Spend Almost Four Times More on Incarcerating Prisoners Than Educating Students, Studies Say

By Elizabeth Prann

Published March 14, 2011

| FoxNews.com


An examination of state budgets has revealed a startling discrepancy: most states are spending three to four times more incarcerating prisoners than they are educating students.

According to research gathered from the Department of Justice, Georgia lawmakers, for example, dole out almost $18,000 a year to house one inmate in a state prison. But the National Education Association says the state spends about one-third of that to put a child through the public education system.

And other states have larger discrepancies.

In analyzing two separate reports from the Department of Justice and the National Education Association conducted over similar periods, research shows California spends about $47,000 per inmate while only spending about $9,000 for every student enrolled. New York State spends about $56,000 per inmate and approximately $16,000 for every student in the school system. Michigan pays about $34,000 for every prisoner and about $11,000 for a student.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/14/states-spend-times-incarcerating-educating-studies-say-464156987/#ixzz1GbDZKTxa

And the Feds spend $200,000 per homeless person. (NPR). Seems the Feds have created all these different bureaus to take care of different categories of the homeless and have been building multi-million dollar housing units for the poor.

Might be cheaper just to give them $1000 loaded debit cards every week. Instead we are helping out general contractors.
Might be cheaper to buy them $30K homes in Detroit and $500 a week.

I'd venture to opine that if we boarded and fed the students in addition to providing the institution and employees to effect educating them that the cost of educating would be higher than the cost of incarcerating criminals. For the comparison to be remotely accurate, the cost of feeding, clothing and housing the students in a secured environment (to prevent their escape and ensure their attendance) would have to be included along with the costs the author currently attributes to their education. Not a bad idea when you think about it. Send them off at 6 and let them out at 18. You'd all but put an end to teenage pregnancy, teenage tobacco, alcohol and drug use. Set it up so that they couldn't get out unless they could read, write and figure - and they'd already have a developed aversion to being incarcerated for violating the law.

The author might be on to something here.........

I'd also like to point out that the obvious fallacy of the merits of the piece clearly indicates that progressives are indeed employed by FauxNews.

I'd also like to point out that the obvious fallacy of the merits of the piece clearly indicates that progressives are indeed employed by FauxNews.

You spend way too much time defending LJ, it is catching up to you.

Maybe we just need to make Sheriff Joe in Arizona head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He should be able to find a way to cut some costs.

Nmysys wrote:

I'd also like to point out that the obvious fallacy of the merits of the piece clearly indicates that progressives are indeed employed by FauxNews.

You spend way too much time defending LJ, it is catching up to you.

Oh come now Nmy - they either lifted it from the NY Times or hired one of the "reporters" from MSNBC to come up with that piece. It wasn't intended to inform, it was intended to justify continuing to spend increasing amounts of money for a system that has proven itself to be a failure. The problem isn't the amount of money being spent on education. The problem is that the education policy has been surrendered to a larger entity than it should have been. The parents of the county should hire the principal of the local school and the instructors that work in it, along with setting their compensation, along with taxing themselves to provide for it. It shouldn't even rise to the level of state spending, let alone federal spending.

Privatize public education and the prison system. If it is good enough for NASA.............

"The price goes up in 2014 for an astronaut to fly to and from the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. NASA announced the news Monday................
NASA chief Charles Bolden says it's critical for U.S. companies to take over this transportation job."

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=13134958

PS:

I agree with your perspective on the story, don't get me wrong. But what you failed to recognize was my sarcastic observation at the top of the posting.

Do Prisoners achieve their goals better than the products of our educational system?

So for all intents and purposes we were both on the same wavelength.

The education system and prison system is about the same..... just look at their designs.