[ceejayoz]

The national average cost to keep someone a prisoner is $31k/year.

http://www.reentryeducationnetwork.org/advocacy-platform.htm...

> New York State college in prison programs have also proven effective, with only 7.7% of incarcerated people who attended college classes re-incarcerated compared to the 29.9% recidivism rate of those who did not attend any college classes.

A 75% reduction in recidivism will pay for community college many, many times over. It's a tremendous net-win for the taxpayer, but our "hard on crime" attitudes prevent us from saving ourselves billions of dollars in damages, policing, legal costs, housing/feeding, etc.

[tomjen3]

You assume that the group that did attend community college is the same as the group that did not. This seems, to me, questionable. After all at least those who attempt to get a college education think it is worth the work, which is likely to cause them to reoffend, no?

Ignoring that, how about the effect that if you get caught for your crime you get a free college education? Wouldn't that remove some of the downside of a life of crime.

[ceejayoz]

> Wouldn't that remove some of the downside of a life of crime.

That's a problem if prison it to be primarily punitive. I'd prefer it were rehabilitative, and thus focused on "what's the best way to turn this person into a productive, positive member of society once released?" I'd also prefer a basic, community college-level education be available to all, not just the incarcerated.

[maxerickson]

The RAND meta analysis at your link (reference 3) rates the quality of the studies it analyzed. Among the groups that were assigned randomly (to have educational intervention or not), the reduction in recidivism was about 40%.

(I had wondered how self selection factored into the numbers...edit to add: I did not mean to suggest that the 40% I quote is directly comparable to the numbers in your post, I meant to share the factoid that the effect was strong when a quality control for self selection was present)

[SteveGerencser]

I'm just glad to see that a lot of people didn't read my full comment. Hard on crime was not what I said, what I said was that there is a finite amount of money available and that when we have to choose between educating prisoners or providing an education to people BEFORE they enter the criminal system the net gain for society is even higher because you stand a far greater chance of keeping them from entering the system to begin with. Making everything else irrelevant.