Dear Governor Corzine,
One of the best ways to provide a new direction for prisoners and to reduce recidivism is to provide education and job training. The vast majority of the men and women imprisoned in New Jersey are high school dropouts from poor urban neighborhoods with failing school systems. Many are functionally illiterate. Yet, New Jersey has no system-wide literacy or ESL program for its prisoners, and it devotes only a tiny fraction of a growing correctional budget to education.
Ignorance is not an effective crime control strategy.
We, the undersigned, urge you to endorse the principle that quality public education should include prison-based education.
To implement this principle, we urge you to:
l. Increase funding for prisoner education.
2. Ensure that all prisoners receive validated literacy testing
and an opportunity for literacy instruction.
3. Encourage and expand prisoner-managed literacy programs.
4. Encourage Congress to restore Pell grants for men and women in
prison and and support other college-in-prison programs.
5. Adopt policies to encourage volunteer education and tutoring projects in prisons, donation of books for prison libraries, and prisoner use of libraries.
6. Develop good time credit or other plans to encourage prisoners to
participate in literacy and education programs.
Prisoners, their families, the communities to which they will return, and all of us will benefit if education is made a priority inside prison walls. We thank you for your attention to our concerns.
