The state will reach the spending landmark in 5 years based on California's current prison and state university budgets. California recently committed to spending $7.4 billion (on top of the prison operating budget of over $10 billion for fiscal year 2007-08) to build another 40,000 new prison beds by taking out bonds to finance construction. Prison spending is growing around 9% a year while spending on higher education is growing at 5% per year.(2)
There is a strong correlation between education and imprisonment. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (the U.$. Department of Justice's own organization) latest study on 1997 population data, 41% of State and Federal prisoners had not completed high school. This compares with 18% of the general population age 18 and older.(3) Things look even worse among prisoners age 20 to 39 showing that the trend is towards more prisoners without a high school education as younger prisoners are even less educated than older prisoners. Other more recent studies have shown this trend continues. The likelihood of ending up in prison is tremendously higher for young Black men who drop out of school before getting a high school diploma. And a college degree is further protection against imprisonment.
On the other side of education, in-prison education programs have repeatedly been shown to reduce recidivism by helping prisoners to find jobs and opportunities once they are released. Individual and meta studies repeatedly conclude the same thing: "Since 1990, the literature has shown that prisoners who attend educational programs while they are incarcerated are less likely to return to prison following their release. Studies in several states have indicated that recidivism rates have declined where inmates have received an appropriate education. Furthermore, the right kind of educational program leads to less violence by inmates involved in the programs and a more positive prison environment."(4)
Part of the reason California is spending the additional $7.4 billion is the abysmal situation in prisons in the state. In 2005 California prisons were placed in receivership by a U.$. District Court judge for medical incompetence and other aspects of the system are no better. Now the state claims it is trying to fix things by building more beds to house the already overflowing population in existing prisons. Currently California prisons house almost double the population they were originally designed for at 173,000 prisoners.(2)
They also claim this money will go towards rehabilitation. We have absolutely no reason to believe the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation (CDCR) will actually do anything beyond the recent addition of the word "Rehabilitation" to their name. California already has one of the highest recidivism rates in the country, with an astronomical 70% of released prisoners ending up back inside within three years. And in recent years we have seen education programs, visitation, and even mail cut back so that prisoners are left with very little to do behind bars and a virtually impossible task of going straight from prison to the streets with no education or transitional services.
Implementing a state-wide ban of educational material from MIM is one more way to keep prisoners locked up. Prisoners who read our literature frequently tell us they learn to channel their time into productive activities rather than participating in violence behind bars. And the education helps them have a better chance at staying on the street once they are released. We get letters pleading for reading materials like this one from Salinas Valley State Prison all the time: "I'm an inmate at Salinas Valley State Prison and am on a yard that's been on lockdown off and on for approximately 4 years. Therefore I'm unable to get to the library here. I've read every 'floater' here. I would be very grateful for any soft back books you could send. Anything you send will be read and reread by many inmates." Surely the CDC"R" knows there is a demand for reading materials in the prisons, but they don't even bother to fill this void with fluff novels. They prefer to spend their large budget on higher salaries for brutal guards and legal defense for their illegal activities like setting up prisoner fights for sport.
Of course, the CDC"R" does have reasons to ban MIM from the prisons. Educating prisoners is counter to their goal. With education comes consciousness, and while prisoners working with MIM report avoiding violent confrontations (both with their peers and with guards), they are also more likely to take up legal and administrative appeals, and to educate and organize their fellow prisoners to stand up for their legal rights. As one California prisoner wrote to us in October of last year:
"In extending my respects to all, I would also like to convey my heartfelt appreciation to everyone working at, working with and/or affiliated with Maoist Internationalist Movement for all that you do and the services you provide. Especially, in regards to prisoners. Speaking from personal experience I can say that in receiving and reading your newsletters, it's both a major source of motivation and encouragement. To say that your MIM Notes have served me well does not cover any specifics, but I can say that your notes have been a potent ingredient towards my transformation: and your free books to prisoners program has nurtured and fed me like a baby at his mother's bosom. The books you have been so generous to send have taught me to respect and value the importance of an education, an education that has taught me that with knowledge comes enormous responsibility. The responsibility that arises from not just knowing the difference between what is said to be right, or wrong, testing an deciphering, truth and lies, but knowing and acting in accordance with what is consistent and progressive in the exercise of self determination and self defense.With clear evidence that spending money on education can reduce imprisonment, and even reduce crime rates overall at a price that is cheaper than locking people up, and further evidence that education in prisons will reduce the number of prisoners, we have to talk about why California is choosing these spending priorities. Prisons serve capitalism as a tool of social control. Prisons are mainly used as a tool of national oppression within capitalist Amerika. The disproportionate numbers of oppressed nationalities in prisons tell this story very clearly. And in California, prisons are mostly used to lock up Mexicans and Blacks. In a border state, this is a convenient trick in the battle against immigration (Mexicans migrating back to their land). And in a state with a strong history of militant revolutionary activism among oppressed nationalities (the birthplace of the Black Panther Party was Oakland California), the legacy of a decades long war against any possibility of national liberation struggles within U.$. borders continues in an expanding prison system.(5)"Even today as I sit in the gulags in one of the most abusive and repressive prisons in this country, being taunted and tormented by my sadistic captors, I'm not discouraged by either the dingy confines of this steel and concrete dungeon or the rough road ahead that I must travel. You see, I will persevere these trials gladly to oppose, expose and blow as many holes as I can in this political, social and economic system of exploitation and oppression. "
Clearly the capitalists have proven themselves unable to act for the good of people based on factual information. Any logic-driven solution working with the purported goal of decreasing imperialist-defined crime would stop funding prison expansion and instead focus on education. MIM doesn't pretend to buy into the imperialist definition of crime which locks up drug users for years but lets the biggest mass murderers (in the government) go on running the country. We can see that the only solution to this criminal injustice system is an end to the capitalist system that requires imprisonment.
Notes:
1. See MIM's web page on censorship:
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/agitation/prisons/censor/ca/index.html
2. San Francisco Chronicle, May 21, 2007
3. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report: Education and Correctional
Populations, January 2003
4. Journal of Correctional Education, v55 n4, p297-305, December 2004. See
also The Nation, March 4, 2005: "Studies have clearly shown that
participants in prison education, vocation and work programs have
recidivism rates 20-60 percent lower than those of nonparticipants.
Another recent major study of prisoners found that participants in
education programs were 29 percent less likely to end up back in prison,
and that participants earned higher wages upon release."
5. For more on prisons as a tool of social control check out MIM Theory
11, Amerikkkan Prisons on Trial.