Lack-of-School-to-Prison Pipeline
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| Image from Flickr, by aclu.socal |
We often hear of the school-to-prison pipeline, where kids exit our public education system poorly educated and without a diploma or skills, leaving them vulnerable to unemployment and a future life of crime. While this is clearly a bombastic overstatement, it is true that prisoners tend to be less literate and educated than society at large. Indeed, some estimates indicate that as many as 66% of California’s inmates are reading below a 9th-grade reading level, more than 50% below a 7th-grade level, and 21% below a 3rd-grade level, suggesting that there is a link between education and incarceration. However, the majority of inmates are also poor and, since there is also a link between wealth and educational success, it is likely that