We must educate prisoners.

• Author: Bell, Raymond

They require classes that lead to skills which can be parlayed into jobs upon their release. Otherwise, they invariably will revert to lives of crime.

ALMOST TWO decades ago, a cartoon appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer that depicted a prison guard talking to his warden and saying, "I don't know what things are coming to, Warden. Sixty percent of the inmates in this prison can't write a decent extortion note! " As we approach a new century, the prison population has grown at an alarming rate, but the educational level is still as woeful as it was 20 years ago.

Prisons are a growth industry, with 182 under construction. When completed, they will add some 67,350 beds to the current capacity at a cost of $2,800,000,000. Even given the proposed new construction that is on the drawing boards and will provide 89,000 more beds, the jails, prisons, and juvenile treatment centers of this country will be bursting at the seams.

In spite of what is written in the press about Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, the average inmate in the nation's correctional facilities is functionally illiterate, probably has a learning disability, never had a steady job, was a juvenile delinquent, used drugs and alcohol, and came from a dysfunctional home in which he or she was abused physically and/or sexually. They are products of an educational system that has failed to prepare them to be able to contribute to society. If an individual does not have the skills, values, and abilities to earn a living legally and acceptably, he or she most certainly will turn to illegal pursuits.

The findings of various research studies regarding such inmates' backgrounds--academic, vocational, and social--are consistent over time. It is clear that prisoners come from a culturally and educationally deprived environment. Academically, the average inmate has not attended school beyond the 10th grade, and, although the time in attendance appears to be on the increase, achievement has remained constant at just below the seventh-grade level. Of greater concern, perhaps, is that this lack of academic performance can be attributed to the fact that at least half of them have a specific learning disability, usually associated with visual or auditory perception, especially the latter.

The distribution of intelligence among prison populations shows the average IQ to be 86. That is 14 points, or one standard deviation, under the national mean. Approximately 15% of inmates score below 75 on the Wechsler Scale of Adult Intelligence-Revised. A score of 75 generally is considered to be the cutoff for identifying those who may be mentally retarded. This would suggest a substantially higher percentage of moderately retarded...