I remember learning on my publishing travels that once upon a time the budget of the excellent California State University system exceeded that of the state prison system. However, as tough on crime policies became popular the budget for imprisonment exceeded (and still exceeds) that for education.
Another anecdote. A professor I called on at a Mississippi Delta Community College introduced me to her husband, a photography teacher in the art department. He showed me a portfolio of photographs taken in the local state prison: he photographed inmates on admission and on release. Since Mississippi had the death penalty his second photograph of a prisoner sometimes included those about to die. The photographer told me that the prison once provided basic education for the prisoners. However, a Mississippi legislator discovered that the education of a prisoner cots more than the education of a student in a state high school. He proposed to eliminate this disparity by removing funding for education programmes in state prisons. He cannot have been successful, since the state’s prisons do provide education programmes, but I imagine that the legislator may have attracted popular support.
My British friends will already know that there is much controversy here about a government policy to release a substantial number of prisoners before their planned release date. The reason is that our prisons are almost full and may soon be unable to admit any further prisoners. Our government that tells us that its finances are very constrained, but nevertheless reassures us that the problem will be resolved by building more prisons at considerable expense. I am no criminologist, but I am not sure that I value a government by its ability to build prisons.
A couple of weeks ago Jan and I returned from a short trip to Manchester by train. At Oxford a man boarded the train and began to address the passengers in a loud voice. He asked whether anybody had any cocaine; or did anybody want one of his cookies (he walked up and down the carriage offering them). He informed us that he had been in jail for five weeks, convicted of a second offence of driving while banned from doing so, and that he hadn’t had a cigarette or a drink in five weeks. He also entertained us with some football chants: “Who are yer? Who are yer? Up the Seagulls [Brighton & Hove Albion], fuck the Palace [Crystal Palace].” He was in a hurry to get home to his wife and thought he might get a taxi to Brighton where he lives. He was not short of cash because he had gone from prison to a Wetherspoon’s pub (for my non-British friends, popularly known simply as Spoons), where he had clearly made up for his five weeks without a drink, and had also won a lot of money on a slot machine – hence his ability to pay for a taxi from Reading to Brighton. He would have left prison with a standard £76 maintenance grant and a rail ticket to Brighton, so he must have invested his subsistence in drinks and the slot machine. As the train arrived at Reading station (where we changed trains) he informed us that “Old Bill” was waiting for him. As we left the train, we saw him in conversation with three or four police officers who were checking his papers.
In short, this man had occupied a scarce prison space for five weeks, and upon his release had headed straight for the pub, become very drunk, and was possibly detained by the police within a few hours of his release. His driving offence may have been very dangerous and required punishment, but I wonder whether five weeks of imprisonment (cost c.£6,000) and of police officers detaining him at Reading Station was a sensible use of scarce resources. He disturbed the quiet of our journey, but harmed nobody except perhaps himself.
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