Crazy Country: 6 Reasons America Spends More on Prisons Than On Higher Education

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http://www.alternet.org/education/crazy-country-6-reasons-america-spends-more-prisons-higher-education



Are we insane? How can we afford to spend more on prisons than on higher education in our increasingly competitive knowledge-based world? Is this just an isolated case where a few Ryan Republicans hijacked the Wisconsin state budget, or are we looking at a national trend?

To check out the fluke theory, let’s look at California, which along with Wisconsin has (or had) a higher education system that was the envy of the world. Our answer comes from data requested by the Bay Citizen from the Department of Finance and it ain’t pretty. “The budget for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation increased from about 3 percent of the state's general fund in 1980 to 11.2 percent for this fiscal year… Meanwhile, funding for [higher education] dropped from 10 percent of the state's general fund 30 years ago to about 6.6 percent this fiscal year. Or as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it in 2010, "Spending 45 percent more on prisons than universities is no way to proceed into the future. ... What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison uniforms than on caps and gowns?"

Indeed, what does it say about our country? Is this a national trend?

State spending on corrections is growing six times faster than state spending on higher education, according to a 2011 report commissioned by the NAACP. Little wonder that state dollars on prisons will soon outpace state spending on higher education in every state of the union.



1. Prohibition

Our insanity starts with the fact that you can go to prison for dealing drugs, but you are a well-respected member of society if you own a liquor store. It’s as if we have learned nothing from our ill-fated attempts to jam temperance down the throats of fellow-citizens 100 years ago. Our pathetic war on drugs helped pump up the prison population in America from 200,000 in 1980 to over 2 million in 2011. Approximately 50 percent of people in federal prisons and 20 percent of people in state prisons are there for drug-related crimes. But the number is much higher if you include those incarcerated because of other crimes (like theft) related to obtaining drugs.