Monday, October 12, 1998
State prioritizes prisons over education
JUSTICE: Students must push for more funding for schooling, not
jails
By Cori Shepherd
In 1970, there were fewer than 300,000 Americans behind bars;
today, there are more than 1.6 million, giving the United States a
rate of incarceration higher than South Africa under apartheid and
five to 10 times that of other industrialized nations. What does
this terrifying statistic mean for you and me as students at
UCLA?
Often it is difficult for those of us who have never been to a
county jail or state prison to understand what is happening in our
criminal ‘justice’ system. It is hard to understand when the media
and the government constantly paint a picture telling us that
stronger sentencing, such as the ‘three strikes’ law, is needed to
do away with the rising number of ‘criminals’ out there. And since
there are more people supposedly committing crimes, then there must
be more prisons built to lock them all up.
Surprisingly, this ‘lock ’em up and throw away the key’ strategy
has had little or no effect on crime rates  which have
remained relatively stable over the past 30 years. Rather than
reducing crime, prison expansion has diverted public attention and
resources from the roots of the problem  unemployment,
illiteracy, drug addiction, inadequate housing, etc.
Education, particularly higher education, is the institution
that is being severely hurt by the rapid prison expansion that
states such as New York and California have seen over the past 20
years. In New York, where the state has quietly shifted $600,000
million in annual spending from public higher education to the
prison system, there are now more African American men in prison
than attend the New York State University. In California, 21
prisons and only one University of California campus have been
built since 1980.
The State seems to be sending a message to its citizens that
incarceration is more important, and more needed, than education.
If more money is being taken from higher education  which of
course leads to increases in our student fees and decreases in
grants available to students  then those of us who can no
longer afford a college education will likely end up in the
criminal ‘justice’ system.
And new laws such as Proposition 209, which are rapidly closing
off opportunities for young people to get an education, seem to be
helpful toward filling these new prisons with young people of color
and women who did not get the opportunity to go to college. For
example, in 1995, construction funds for higher education dropped
by $954 million, while prison construction funds increased $926
million.
Many people around the country are starting to see the
correlations between these complex issues as 3,000 people attended
the ‘Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex
Conference’ at UC Berkeley from Sept. 25 to Sept. 27. The
conference was sponsored by students, professors, community
activists, ex-prisoners, etc.
At one of the plenaries, Professor Angela Davis charged that our
‘resistance is critical, and we must critically resist’ the
expansion of prisons and the incarceration of millions of people in
this country.
But it will not be Davis alone who brings this issue to the
forefront  rather it will be the millions of students like
yourself whose education is deteriorating for the sake of the
prison industrial complex.
It’s our responsibility to become more aware of this issue and
spread the word about the future of our educational system to
others.
We as students must be responsible for our own education and
actively support others who are involved in the struggle already,
such as student organizations like Free the Mind or Prison
Coalition here on campus.Cori Shepherd
Shepherd is a member of the African Student Union.
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