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Adult Correctional Education Improves Postrelease Outcomes

• Inmates who participate in correctional education programs had a 43 percent lower chance of recidivating than those who did not — a reduction in the risk of recidivating of 13 percentage points.
• Providing correctional education can be cost-effective when it comes to reducing recidivism.
• The odds of obtaining employment postrelease among inmates who participated in correctional education was 13 percent higher than for those who did not, but only one study had a high-quality research design.

Several Programs for Incarcerated Juveniles Show Promise

• Two juvenile correctional education programs show promise: Read 180 and Florida's Avon Park Youth Academy.
• The field is ripe for conducting larger-scale randomized trials.

Key Trends in the Current Correctional Education Landscape

• The 2008 recession led to an overall 6 percent decrease in states' correctional education budgets between fiscal years 2009 and 2012, but it had a much larger impact on states with large and medium prison populations (a 20 and 10 percent decrease, respectively).
• Most states reported using computers in correctional education, but student access to the Internet or Internet-based instruction was limited in most states.
• Of the states planning to implement the more rigorous 2014 General Education Development (GED) exam that relies on computer-based testing, there are concerns about teachers being adequately prepared to teach it and about the time it may take to prepare students for it, as well as about the negative effect on GED completion rates. Medium and large states are expected to encounter more challenges.

More than 2 million adults are incarcerated in U.S. prisons, and each year more than 700,000 leave federal and state prisons and return to communities. Unfortunately, within three years, 40 percent will be reincarcerated. One reason for this is that ex-offenders lack the knowledge, training, and skills to support a successful return to communities. Trying to reduce such high recidivism rates is partly why states devote resources to educating and training individuals in prison. This raises the question of how effective — and cost-effective — correctional education is — an even more salient question given the funding environment states face from the 2008 recession and its continuing aftermath. With funding from the Second Chance Act of 2007, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, asked RAND to help answer this question as part of a comprehensive examination of the current state of correctional education for incarcerated adults and juveniles. The RAND team conducted a systematic review of correctional education programs for incarcerated adults and juveniles. This included a meta-analysis on correctional education's effects on recidivism and postrelease employment outcomes for incarcerated adults, as well as a synthesis of evidence on programs for juveniles. The study also included a nationwide survey of state correctional education directors to understand how correctional education is provided today and the recession's impact. The authors also compared the direct costs of correctional education with those of reincarceration to put the recidivism findings into a broader context.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  How Effective Is Correctional Education for Incarcerated Adults?

• Chapter Three

  A Systematic Review of Correctional Education Programs for Incarcerated Juveniles

• Chapter Four

  RAND Correctional Education Survey

• Chapter Five

  Conclusions and Recommendations

• Appendix A

  Summary of Studies for the Juvenile Correctional Education Review

• Appendix B

  RAND Correctional Education Survey Questionnaire