CDCR LAO Op-Ed
LAO report on education in corrections By Cindie Fonseca
The governor, the Legislature and many outside experts agree that educating prisoners will reduce the chance they will commit more crimes, but will this ever change the culture at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation?
The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) released a report last month detailing the failure of the CDCR to implement education programs in prison that have the potential to reduce the number of inmates who return to prison. That followed January’s report by the Governor’s Rehabilitation Strike Team which came to many of the same conclusions.
The head of adult programs at CDCR, Carole Hood, even said at a Feb. 19 Senate Public Safety Committee hearing that “evidence shows that quality programs reduce recidivism.” Numerous reports from other states show that connection, but here in California our record-keeping is so bad that we cannot effectively track the success or failure of inmates who participate in education programs.
After 14 years of working as an educator in state prison, this talk sounds too familiar. In fact most findings by the Legislative Analyst and the Strike Team mirror those in a 2007 research paper by our union, Service Employees International Union, Local 1000. We showed that Californians were less safe because for decades corrections officials treated inmate rehabilitation as an afterthought, failing to see inmates who gain educational or vocational skills are less likely to commit further crimes upon release.
The Legislative Analyst correctly points out that the department has no program to track inmate rehabilitation or evaluate an inmate’s success or failure over time. Instead many inmates are placed in prisons where they have no access to the type of educational program they need.
The main flaw in the LAO report is the support for funding prison education based on average daily attendance. The LAO proposal will fail because it means funding will be cut because of lockdowns which are controlled by custodial staff with no stake in getting inmates to class. Education would be obliterated beyond repair.
To an outsider it would seem that getting a prisoner from his cell or dorm to a classroom would not be a big deal. But prisoners often miss class because their cellblock is under lockdown. Or classes are cancelled because of staffing shortages or no substitute teachers.
For years, we have been saying that teacher understaffing and high turnover is a chronic problem. Although the department has hired 175 teachers in the past year, we are still severely understaffed. The department also needs to develop a bullpen of substitute teachers.
The Legislative Analyst thinks that tying education to actual attendance will prod wardens into making sure that inmates attend classes. But really the opposite will happen. As education funds are cut, prisons will offer fewer and fewer classes.
Instead there needs to be cultural change in the prison system. A few years ago the Department of Corrections added the word “Rehabilitation” to its name. But rehabilitation is still not seen as central to the department’s mission. Inmate education has been treated an afterthought by many prisons administrators. Wardens need to be ranked on the success of inmate education.
We also need to provide increased incentives for inmates to go to class by increasing the good time credits for those prisoners who perform well. Right now inmates who work two years in a laundry room get just as much good time credit as a prisoner who spends that time earning a General Education Diploma or learning a trade. Learning to fold laundry is not going to help you much outside prison but last year nearly 8,000 inmates participated in vocational classes learning plumbing, carpentry, roofing and auto repair – all programs that can lead to jobs.
In 2006, 90,000 parolees were sent back to prison. Education is one way we can reduce that number, reduce prison overcrowding, save taxpayer money and make California safer.
LAO report on education in corrections ##Cindie Fonseca teaches at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco (Riverside County). She is a board member of the largest union of state employees, SEIU Local 1000, which represents most civilian employees in prisons and youth facilities including teachers, teaching assistants, counselors, librarians and case records analysts.##