Upon reading Changing Priorities: State Criminal Justice Reforms and Investments in Education by Michael Mitchell and Michael Leachman (2014), it is easy to see how there are both advantages and disadvantages to the consideration of reducing funds in corrections in order to increase the funds in early childhood education. A positive aspect of this consideration is that the added income to early childhood education can lead to more preschools in an area as well as better education programs within these pre-schools. This could be a major improvement for low-income families, where research has shown that these children who attend pre-school have greater cognitive abilities. They even tend to earn more upon adulthood (Leachman & Mitchell, 2014). Another positive benefit would be that more funding into early education could mean smaller class sizes in larger inner city schools. By reducing the classroom size, each student receives a greater amount of individualized attention, leading to these students having a higher amount of achievement (Leachman & Mitchell, 2014).
On the opposite side, corrections have had a large increase in its population over the last couple of decades. In fact, since 1978, 36 states have seen their prison population triple (Leachman & Mitchell, 2014). A rise in population this large will require a larger amount of funding to support that population. Without the greater funds that are currently being provided for the corrections population, it would not be possible to provide the resources that these offenders are currently receiving. Such resources include drug treatment, mental health treatment, and general rehabilitative services that can assist the offender in leaving the prison system never to return (Leachman & Mitchell, 2014). While this deficit could be partially assisted through budget cuts in other areas of the prison, they could not be completely compensated.
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By continuing to focus spending on corrections rather than early childhood education, there would be more money to increase the number offenders on probation and parole. Community corrections could focus on expanding their programs to reduce recidivism rates.
By shifting the spending to early childhood education, schools could focus on keeping kids in school. They would also have the money for more after school programs to help develop the youths into contributing members of society when the reach adulthood rather than ending up incarcerated. When you look at all the rate that our nation's prison population has grown, I believe that spending needs to be shifted to the children's education. This could help to reduce the amount that will end up incarcerated in the future. I also believe that states need to decriminalize certain offense as Mitchell and Leachman mentioned in their report. (Mitchell, M., Leachman, M., 2014) The length of sentences for non-violent offenders needs to be looked at also, these sentences could be reduced and more placed in community supervision instead. This would increase the cost of community corrections, but it would still be cheaper than housing an offender and providing 24-hour supervision. As you can probably tell by now I for focusing more spending on the children rather than on corrections. I feel the better chance we give them could be the best way to effect incarceration rates
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