Education vs. Prisons: Which Investment Makes Us More Competitive?
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- Tuesday, 19 July 2011 19:44 Published on Tuesday, 19 July 2011 19:44
As a society gearing up for its future, would you want to invest in prisons or education? While some may feel that this is a false choice, this country is making a decision to invest in prisons over education. In fact, we are now spending over $70 billion per year on prisons, making it the second fastest growing state budget category after Medicaid (see: http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/initiatives_detail.aspx?initiativeID=31336).
There are probably few areas of agreement among them, but the NAACP, ACLU, NRA and Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform concur that we are spending too much on our penal system. See the following article: http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/budget-idea-divert-money-from-prisons-to-schools-30187/. The article goes on to discuss how there appears to be an inverse relationship between investments in education and prisons.
