A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

    FOR RELEASE                        Contact:  Melinda Kitchell     December 2, 1994                               (202) 401-1008

PRISONERS LESS EDUCATED, LESS LITERATE, STUDY FINDS

Literacy Behind Prison Walls, a new report from the U.S. Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics, presents evidence that prisoners have lower literacy rates than the overall population. However, when prisoners were compared to a population of similar race, ethnicity and education, the literacy levels were about equal.

The findings confirm that -- in prison or out -- more education is linked to greater literacy, and while only about a quarter of the general population lacks a high school diploma, about half of prisoners have failed to complete school.

"It is in our national interest to ensure that the vast numbers of people living behind prison walls are not further imprisoned by the walls of illiteracy," said Sharon P. Robinson, assistant secretary for educational research and improvement.

"Otherwise, they will be unemployable upon re-entering society, strongly increasing the chances of recidivism."

Prisoners who make productive use of their time while incarcerated -- by reading, writing, attending vocational classes and being involved in enrichment groups -- were found to score higher.

As distinct groups, white and black prisoners with high school diplomas or more education score about the same in literacy as whites and blacks who are not incarcerated.

The study also found that repeat offenders remain about as literate as those who are in prison for the first time. However, former prisoners who were released and did not become repeat offenders are not included in the study.

"The study's findings highlight the need to focus special preventive interventions not only in public schools, but also among juveniles who are incarcerated," said Laurie Robinson, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs. "While literacy alone will never be a vaccine against criminality, it one of many skills needed to function -- and function well -- as a responsible and law-abiding adult in our society."

"With its comprehensive description of literacy skills demonstrated by prison inmates," said Augusta S. Kappner, assistant secretary for the Education Department's office of vocational and adult education, "this report provides important information for those who administer, work or volunteer in programs that directly affect prisoner learning."

Two-thirds of prisoners rank in the bottom two tiers of five literacy levels used in the study, compared to less than half of adults in U.S. households, according to the study.

The assessment measured three forms of literacy:

• prose literacy -- ability to understand and use information from texts;
• document literacy -- ability to locate and use information contained in documents such as schedules, charts, maps and forms; and,
• quantitative literacy -- ability to locate and use numerical information from documents and texts.

The scores reveal that the most difficult task two-thirds of prisoners could perform was to make low-level inferences from reading material; locate a specific piece of information in a document even though it contains distracting information; and add, subtract, multiply or divide simple numbers found in a text. Two-thirds of prisoners were not always able to integrate several pieces of information, write a response that combines their own knowledge with the text given, or choose and carry out a sequence of arithmetic operations.

The report examines similarities and differences between prisoners and adults in households:

• White prisoners score higher than blacks who, in turn, score higher than Hispanics, consistent with the general household population. The prison population is 35 percent white, 44 percent black, and 18 percent Hispanic. The household population is 76 percent white, 11 percent black, and 10 percent Hispanic;
• Since the business of educational institutions is to teach literacy skills, it is not surprising that the higher the level of education, the higher the literacy score. Prisoners with 9-12 years of schooling outperform those with 0-8 years of schooling by about 35 points, and those with a high school diploma outperform those with 9-12 years of schooling by 15 points. Prisoners with some postsecondary education outperform high school graduates by about 30 points;
• Combining all races and ethnic groups, inmate GED holders appear to have a literacy advantage over inmates with a high school diploma. GED holders in prison have literacy proficiency similar to those in households. In contrast, high school graduates in prisons have lower literacy proficiency than those in households. While almost half of prisoners have not completed high school and another 17 percent have obtained a GED to complete high school, only four percent of the household population has obtained a GED;
• A higher proportion of the prison population reported having at least one disability, often described as a learning disability or a mental or emotional condition. Their scores are much lower than the scores of their household counterparts for quantitative and prose literacy;
• Higher literacy proficiency is associated with more parental education. And inmates, more often than adult householders, are less educated than their parents. Their parents are also less educated that householders' parents;
• Inmates who come from homes where English was not spoken have lower literacy proficiency than inmates from English-speaking homes.

  Several of the findings shed light on prison life:

• Inmates who report reading and writing frequently (daily or a few times a week) score higher than those who reported reading less than once a week. Prisoners report reading and writing letters more often than adults in households. Similarly, prisoners more often report having read books in the last six months;
• Prisoners who held jobs prior to incarceration and earned $1,500 or more per month have higher prose and quantitative literacy than those who earned less. Inmates who were assigned work in prison (69 percent) score higher than those who were not assigned a job;
• Inmates who participate in vocational training (30 percent of inmates) have higher (prose literacy) scores than those who did not participate or took other education programs. (Longitudinal studies of inmates have shown that prisoners who take educational or vocational classes are less likely to return to prison);
• Prisoners who are involved in three or more organized groups (such as addiction, religious, life skills, racial/ethnic) score higher than the nearly half of prisoners who do not join groups;
• Prisoners who were incarcerated for crimes involving drugs (one quarter of all prisoners) were the least literate; those serving time for crimes involving property were the most literate.

The study measured the literacy of federal and state prisoners in 1992 as part of the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, contributed to this second report in the NALS series.

The Adult Education Amendments of 1988, Section 383(b), directed the Education Department to assess the literacy of the nation's adult population.

NALS included a personal interview survey developed to directly assess English literacy using tasks that simulate the literacy demands of ordinary life. The survey included 26,000 adults aged 16 and older, including 1,100 federal and state prisoners, all randomly selected to represent the U.S. population.

Literacy Behind Prison Walls is available by writing the U.S. Government Printing Office, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954, or call the GPO Order Desk (202) 512-1800. The stock number is 065-000-00716-9, the price is $13.00.