Education has been a part of American prison systems since 1798. The most common finding of 20 years of research is that inmates who participate in education programs are more likely to be employed and less likely to end up back in prison than nonparticipants. Ideally, academic educational services should be the focus of detained and incarcerated youth's institutional experience.
State constitutions guarantee all children the right to a free public education.
Although educational services are offered to many juveniles in confinement, this is not always the case. In addition, many State education departments have not approved the institutional education programs, the programs often are not designed to address each student's individual educational needs, and students often cannot receive academic credit toward earning diplomas upon their transfer or release. There have been efforts to upgrade programs to improve the quality of schooling for young people in confinement and to create educational service links between school systems and correctional settings. NOSR conducted an extensive literature search and published a report on effective practices in juvenile corrections education and a training and technical assistance manual. 12 NOSR also selected three State-operated juvenile correctional facilities to establish model learning environments for incarcerated youth.