America spends more on its prison system than it does on our K-12 public school system. Let that sink in a minute. Here are some facts, figures and my thoughts about how the #PrisonIndustrialComplex is robbing our public education system, our children and our community.
Over the past three decades, state and local government expenditures on prisons and jails have increased about three times as fast as spending on elementary and secondary education.
At the postsecondary level, it is even worse. From 1990 to 2013, state and local spending on corrections rose by 89 percent while state and local appropriations for higher education remained unchanged.
During that same time, the growth of student loan debt went from $24 billion to $110 billion per year, a 352% increase in loans. The number of students borrowing increased by 40%, while the number of student enrollment in public colleges only increased by about 4%.
But we know that educational attainment and incarceration are linked.... Two-thirds of state prison inmates have not completed high school. But it gets worse...
Young black men between the ages of 20 and 24
who do not have a high school diploma have a greater chance of being incarcerated than of being employed.
who do not have a high school diploma have a greater chance of being incarcerated than of being employed.
All too often children growing up in poor communities not only do poorly in school but it's a fact that they are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated more during their school-age years.
Paying teachers more and investing in classroom materials can make a difference in any community. Studies report a 10% increase in teachers’ pay would produce a 5-10 % increase in student performance. Raising teacher wages by 10% has reduced high school dropout rates by 3% to 4%.
These investments in childhood education will lead to higher education achievement and reduced incarceration later in life, but instead... this country just keeps spending money on locking people up.
An entire county school system in my district lost its high school accreditation. The same county, round the same time, just happened to have the highest incarceration rate in the entire United States of America. Make no doubt about the correlation.
American teachers supervise an average of 20.8 students, while prison guards oversee 5.3 prisoners. Prisoners get three warm meals a day. Meanwhile, my kid had to eat a cold cheese sandwich because I forgot to send lunch money to school.
I'm running for Congress because I'm tired of this being ignored. Tired of organizations talking about banning private prisons, yet accepting their checks.
I'm tired of mass incarceration, underpayment our teachers, biased arrests/conviction rates and the failed war on drugs continuing to go unchecked. An no child should ever have to eat a cold cheese sandwich. Like, follow, RT or whatever you have to do to help me address this.
Note: Please read the entire thread.
