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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS RELEASE |
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| www.cjcj.org |
| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
For Immediate Release: September 1998
CONTACT: Daniel Macallair
E-mail: [dmacallair@cjcj.org]
Tel: (415) 621-5661 x310
Five Times More Black Men In California's Prisons Than Universities, Reveals Justice Policy Institute Research SAN FRANCISCO, CA - The funding gap between corrections and higher education became wider during Governor Wilson's terms than under any other Governor in California's history, according to a Rockefeller Foundation-funded study to be released September 23rd by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), a criminal justice think-tank with offices in Washington, DC and San Francisco.
While the higher education budget has shrunk 3% in the last decade, the corrections industry has experienced a 60% boom - and wages for correctional officers have more than doubled, says the study, "Class Dismissed: Higher Education vs. Corrections During the Wilson Years," which was co-authored by Khaled Taqi-Eddin, Dan Macallair, and Vincent Schiraldi of JPI.
"It's no coincidence that Wilson received over $1.5 million in campaign contributions from the prison guards union," says Vincent Schiraldi, Executive Director of JPI. "And this mutual back-scratching comes at the expense of the millions of Californians who will be educated by criminals in prison, rather than teachers in school."
Young men of color pay the heaviest price for Wilson's policies, according to the study, which found that five Black males are in prison for every Black male in a state university - a startling increase over the 1996 ratio of 4:1. Similarly, the study notes, "three Latino males were added to the prison population for every one added to California's four-year public universities."
"Class Dismissed" examines the state's spending patterns and the racial composition of public colleges and prisons during Wilson's Administration, using data from the California Postsecondary Education Commission and the California Department of Corrections. The researchers will present their findings to delegates at Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex, a national conference to be held at U.C. Berkeley, September 25-27.
"It's tragic that Wilson's legacy will be the slow death of California's schools," said Dan Macallair, who directs the Justice Policy Institute's San Francisco office. "Now that the 'Governor of Corrections'' term is almost over, the Californian public needs to hear what the new gubernatorial candidates will do to make sure our kids go to UC, not San Quentin.”
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