dditional investigations, arrests, trials, and correctional activities. Worse, the costs incurred by the state associated with the earlier prison experiences of the recidivists in efforts to rehabilitate the prisoners appear to have been wasted.
Obviously, some effective rehabilitation strategy is required if the recidivism rates in Texas prisons are to be reduced. The Texas Association of X-Offenders (1999) personal counseling programs by former prison inmates along the lines of an Alcoholics Anonymous program. Another view holds that recidivism is reduced through causing prisoners to become actively involved in religion. A third perspective contends that longer sentences lead to higher rates of recidivism (Gendreau, Coggin, & Cullen, 1999).
A more frequent contention is that recidivism is reduced by teaching prisoners skills that may be used to gain employment upon release from incarceration (Sewell, 1998). This approach is based on the provision of vocational education to prisoners during their periods of incarceration. Another educationally-based approach calls for the improvement of a prisoner's general education skills as a strategy for the reduction of recidivism. The Educational Testing Service (1996) reported that, while most of the people sent to prison in the United States eventually are paroled, two-thirds of those persons paroled lack the literacy skills necessary to function in American society. For prisoners in this classification, thus, basic educational services in prison are advocated. Other advocates of education as a strategy for the reduction of recidivism contend that several educational options should be made available, depending upon an individual prisoner's educational needs (Stevens, 1998).
Texas, unlike many other states, does have an active prison education program. Less than $50 million per year of the $2 million per year budget of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, however, is spen...