page_title: Prisoner
section_title: United States
hierarchical_section_title: Prisoner / Rights / United States
caption_attribution_description: 1912 illustration of an inmate in an American prison receiving "the paddle", a form of torture used for punishment. This was illegal at the time.
context_page_description: A prisoner is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement, captivity, or forcible restraint. The term applies particularly to serving a prison sentence in a prison. This term no longer applies to pre-trial defendants.
context_section_description: Both federal and state laws govern the rights of prisoners. Prisoners in the United States do not have full rights under the Constitution, however, they are protected by the Eighth Amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
  Growing research associates education with a number of positive outcomes for prisoners, the institution, and society. Although at the time of the ban's enactment there was limited knowledge about the relationship between education and recidivism, there is growing merit to idea that education in prison is a preventative to re-incarceration. Several studies help illustrate the point. For example, one study in 1997 that focused on 3,200 prisoners in Maryland, Minnesota, and Ohio, showed that simply attending school behind bars reduced the likelihood of re-incarceration by 29 percent. In 2000, the Texas Department of Education conducted a longitudinal study of 883 men and women who earned college degrees while incarcerated, finding recidivism rates between 27.2 percent (completion of an AA degree) and 7.8 percent (completion of a BA degree), compared to a system-wide recidivism rate between 40 and 43 percent.10 One report, sponsored by the Correctional Education Association, focused on recidivism in three states, concluding that education prevented crime. More recently, a 2013 Department of Justice funded study from the RAND Corporation found that incarcerated individuals who participated in correctional education were 43% less likely to return to prison within 3 years than prisoners who did not participate in such programs. The research implies that education has the potential to impact recidivism rates positively by lowering them.
caption: 1912 illustration of an inmate being punished in an American prison
exif: {"Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Paint.NET v3.31", "Image DateTime": "2008:08:08 21:03:15", "Image Rating": "0", "Image Tag 0x4748": "[1, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 214, 15, 201, 191, 224, 15, 201, 63, 219, 15, 201, 191, 219, 15, 201, 63]", "Image Tag 0x4749": "0", "Image Padding": "[]"}