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| Course Cuts Slam Door On Future, Inmates Say |
| By Chicago Tribune |
| Published: 12/21/2001 |
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Illinois Gov. George Ryan as decided to eliminate the state's higher-education and vocational prison education program beginning Feb. 1 and prison inmates involved in those programs are outraged.. Since the 1970s, thousands of inmates have used the state's prison-education program to acquire new skills they can apply on the outside. Now that the courses are slated for elimination, many former and current inmates are speaking out against the move. They argue that without the college courses, inmates will lose direction and hope and will be more likely to return to a life of crime. Department of Corrections officials dispute those claims, arguing that most inmates are functionally illiterate and would not qualify for college-level classes or vocational training. The state's general equivalency diploma program and the adult basic education courses will remain, serving a much larger number of inmates who need the most basic literacy skills, department officials say. 'Two-thirds of the inmate population really doesn't excel at much better than about a 6th- to 8th-grade level,' said Brian Fairchild, a department spokesman. The Department of Corrections estimates that of the 30,000 inmates in the department's total education program, about a third are in the higher-education and vocational courses slated for cuts. Those courses range from certificate programs leading directly to employment to general-education college courses students would typically take during their freshman and sophomore years. The state should save at least $5 million for the remainder of the fiscal year by eliminating the college-education program, which is offered through 12 colleges statewide, including Chicago's Roosevelt University. Annually, the program costs the state roughly $11 million, department officials said. 'These are not cuts we would want to make in normal circumstances,' Fairchild said. 'But when you cut $50 million out of college programs for the free community, for us to cut $5 million out of college programs for inmates is really kind of a reciprocal cut.' |
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