EDUCATION AND RECIDIVISM IN TEXAS PRISONS: A RESEARCH PROPOSAL
As the prison population in the United States hit record levels in 1998 (the latest full year for which such data have been announced), 1,252,830 persons sentenced to more than one-year were incarcerated. Thus, nearly one-half of one-percent (actually .0046) of the total population was in prison. Approximately 600,000 more persons were incarcerated in jails serving sentences of one-year or less (Bureau of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1999). A total of 144,510 persons, serving sentences of one-year or more, were incarcerated in Texas in 1998. In Texas, therefore, almost three-quarters of one-percent (actually .0073) of the total population was in prison (Bureau of Criminal Justice Statistics, 1999).
Texas has a thriving prison-industrial complex, wherein private prison operators, construction companies building prisons, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (the state's largest department with 39,000 employees and an annual budget of $2 billion) are profiting handsomely. The majority of the population in Texas supports the policies that are filling new prison cells as fast as they can be built. Nevertheless, Texas legislators (Republicans and Democrats alike) are wringing their collective hands over the rising recidivism rateù53 percent in 1992, which was the last time the Texas Department of Criminal Justice made such a determination (Brown, 1998). A private organization, the Texas Association of X-Offenders (1999), however, reported that the recidivism rate in Texas prisons had increased to 57 percent by 1998.
Whatever else Texas criminal justice policy may be accomplishing, it is not lowering the prison recidivism rate. Criminal recidivism is a costly phenomenon. The additional crimes that cause persons to be sent back to prison exact costs on both individual victims and society as a whole. The state budget must cover the costs associated with a...