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| Prison Budget Freeze Puts Pressure on Md. GED Program |
| By Easton Star Democrat |
| Published: 02/14/2003 |
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Maryland law says that prisoners without high school diplomas have to take classes toward their GED - but nothing in the law says the state has to make it easy for them. Of the 14,000 inmates without diplomas, the state has room for only 4,000 in classes in its prisons, and at least 1,800 more are on a waiting list. And the proposed fiscal 2004 budget freezes the number of teachers from the program, a short-term move that advocates fear will have long-term effects. 'If people come out of prisons as ill-prepared and unable to function in the workforce as they were when they went in, then we are doing a great disservice to all. We're just postponing the reckoning,' said Phil Holmes, spokesman for Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, which tries to help inmates work back into society. State officials had approved an increase in the Correctional Education Program budget last year from $12.6 million to $14.2 million, but that increase was frozen when the state first ran into budget problems last year. Gov. Robert Ehrlich has budgeted $13.2 million for the program in fiscal 2004, a 'stand-pat' proposal that would allow for 174 staffers, down from 177 positions currently authorized. 'The program is critically important but it wasn't an area that we were allowed to add money this year,' said Neil Bergsman, budget director for the Department of Budget and Management. 'The correctional education budget was a stand-pat budget. We didn't make any unusual cuts, we didn't add any enhancements.' Ehrlich would not be the first governor to stand pat on the correctional education budget. A 2000 study by the University of Maryland's Bureau of Governmental Research found that 'resources devoted to educational and job preparation programs have not kept pace with the tremendous increase in the institutional population over the past 10 years.' It said that while the prison population grew rapidly during the 1990s, 'the resources allocated to educational staff grew a mere 4 percent. As a consequence, the proportion of inmates receiving educational services declined from 34 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 1999.' State officials said that the correctional education program had 191 full-time staff in fiscal 1991, when the prison population stood at 17,800 inmates. In late January, the count stood at 24,040 inmates and 174 staffers. |
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