One-third of all prisoners fail at simple tasks such as finding an intersection on a map. Two-thirds of all prisoners would have difficulty writing a letter to explain a billing error. Two-thirds of all prisoners could not compute miles per gallon using information from a mileage record chart. That is 6.3 million people. If current incarceration rates do not change, ultimately 1 out of every 20 Americans will serve time in a prison during their lifetime.
Punishment is so much easier to understand and pay for than education.
But our eagerness to build prisons and punish rather than rehabilitate is an ostrich response. The data clearly shows that two-thirds of them lack the basic literacy skills to function in the modern world. Many of them came to prison because illiteracy took them to crime and many will return to crime and to prison because their illiteracy binds them to hopeless lives. Meanwhile, Parsimony Wins There are now more students in the public schools than there were at the peak of the Baby Boom romp through K-12. They are studying in school buildings that are on average 42 years old.