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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE |
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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 |
CONTACT: Daniel Macallair
E-mail: [dmacallair@cjcj.org]
Tel: (415) 621-5661 x310
This was a sentiment echoed by Maryland Governor Paris Glendening, himself a former University of Maryland Professor, in his 1998 State of the State Address: "A college education -- not just a high school diploma -- is what the jobs of today and the jobs of tomorrow demand. We cannot tell our high school seniors that they cannot afford to go to college. College is now the standard, it must be affordable."
Yet when he formally announced his resignation as President of the University of Maryland at College Park, William E. Kirwin said, "If you look at the total strength of the university, we still have a long way to go. The citizens of this state need to put a greater priority on public support for higher education.1"
In a state which ranks fifth in the country in per capita wealth, Maryland's expenditures on higher education are not even in the top half of American states. In fact, in 1997, Maryland ranked 33rd in unversity funding, barely above the bottom third of all states. Maryland ranked dead last amongst Souther states in percentages of state tax revenues appropriated to higher education in 1997, behind states such as Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Alabama.2 This disconnect between political rhetoric and funding reality is difficult to reconcile until juxtaposed against one of the state's faster growing departments--prisons. When university and prison expenditure are contrasted, it is clear that prison growth has come at the expense of Maryland's system of higher education.
The trading of classrooms for prison cells is not unique to Maryland. Over the past two years, the Justice Policy Institute has conducted a series of studies examining the tradeoff between higher education and corrections nationally, as well as in several states. Significant findings include:
1995 was the first year in which states collectively spent more to construct prisons than universities. In fact, there was almost a dollar-for-dollar tradeoff that year, with prison construction funds increasing by $926 million (to $2.6 billion) while university construction funding dropped by a nearly identical $954 million (to $2.5 billion).3
-Nationally, from 1987 to 1995, general fund expenditures for prison operations increased by 30%, while general fund expenditures for universities decreased by 18%.4The comparison between prison populations and public university systems is an important barometer in analyzing policy choices for several reasons. For one thing, unlike other elements of state budgets, higher education and corrections are essentially unaffected by federal mandates. Hence, they are often viewed by budget analysts as dominating a state's "discretionary spending."-From 1984 to 1994, California's prison system realized a 209% increase in funding, compared to a 15% increase in state university funding. California built 21 prisons during that time, and only one state university.5
-From 1992 to 1994, the Florida Department of Corrections received a $450 million increase in funding. That is more than the state's university system received in the previous ten years.6
-The District of Columbia literally has more inmates than DC residents enrolled in its one public university. DC's corrections system experienced a 312% increase in funding from 1977 to 1993, compared to an 82% increase in university funding during that 16 year period.7
Second, since both systems impact primarily the same demographic group -- young adults -- prison and university funding comparisons offer a glimpse into a state's present and future priorities.
Corrections data was also analyzed to calculate changes in the racial makeup of Maryland's prisons since 1990. Data from the Maryland Higher Education Commission was used to analyze the changing racial composition of Maryland's public colleges and universities as well.
From 1990 to 1997, general fund expenditures for the Department of Public Safety's Corrections Division grew from $293 million to $440 million, a $147 million increase in a seven year span. During this same period, higher education funding dropped by $29 million, from $609 million to $580 million.8 (See Figure 1)
This means that, during the 1990s, while funding for Maryland's prisons was experiencing a 50% increase, funding for the state's universities was dropping by 5%. If this funding shift is allowed to continue at this rate, the state would be spending more for prisons than for the entire University System of Maryland by the year 2001, even though, in the year 1990, the state was spending twice as much on its universities as its prisons.
The Maryland Higher Education Commission has predicted that, from 1994 to 2008, there will be a 43% increase in high school graduates in Maryland, well in excess of the national average. They anticipate that, over the next eight years, there will be a 21% increase in the number of full time students attempting to enroll in Maryland's public colleges.9
By the year 2005, nearly one third of job openings in Maryland will require a community college degree, a bachelor's degree, or better. Additionally, 27% of job openings will require some level of training beyond a high school diploma.10
Despite five years of declining crime rates, Americans continue to overestimate their exposure to crime, and particularly violent crime. According to a 1994 survey in Money Magazine, most poll respondents felt that violent crime was at an all time high, even though it was 9% lower than in 1981 (violent crime has dropped even further since that survey). Americans least affected by crime -- elderly whites -- feared crime the most, while Americans most often victimized by crime -- black teenagers -- feared crime the least.11
Crime rates in Maryland have tended to mirror national trends. Violent crime began to decline in the state starting in 1993 -- a year later than the national decline -- and has dropped 6.8% between then and 1996. Likewise, overall crime has fallen, 2.6% during that time period.12
These crime trends are reflected in the intake to the Maryland Department of Corrections, where fully 52% of the increase in inmate population since 1990 is accounted for by non-violent offenders.13 This despite a 1992 report from the Maryland Governor's Task force on Alternatives Sanctions to Incarceration which called for the expansion of community-based sanctions and programs in lieu of incarceration for appropriate offenders, and urged the enactment of a Community Corrections Act for the State of Maryland.14 Unfortunately, the task force's recommendations remain largely ignored.
Still, the good news for Maryland residents is that the shift in funding from their colleges to their prisons is not driven by irrevocable demographics or changes in crime, but rather by policies and practices enacted by their elected officials.
From 1990 to 1997, the state's prison population grew from 16,549 to 21,942, a total of 5,348 inmates. African American inmates accounted for an astonishing 4,806 of this total, while white inmates accounted for only 532.15 (See Figure 2) This means that African American inmates accounted for nine out of every 10 new inmates imprisoned in Maryland since 1990.
Between 1990 and 1997, the number of African American students enrolled full time at Maryland's public, four year institutions increased by 4,256, from 12,765 to 17,021. Maryland was increasing the use of prisons for African Americans during the 1990s's faster than it was increasing the use of full time, four-year public universities.16
Currently, African Americans make up one out of four (25%) of both Maryland's overall population and its public college students.16 But 77.8% -- more than three out of four -- of Maryland's state prisoners are African American.17
Forty-three percent of Maryland's public high school students are minorities, a population which is overrepresented in the roles of the poor.18 Yet Maryland's higher education system has experienced a tension between costs and financial assistance over the past decade. As student need for financial aid has risen, so have fees and the portion of the university budget which is dependent on tuition.
From 1988 to 1996, the percent of undergraduates receiving financial aid increased from 35% to 53%. Unfortunately, due to a shift in federal policy, that aid has increasingly come in the form of loans rather than scholarships. Fully 74% of federal financial aid now comes in the form of loans, saddling tomorrow's low and middle income students with heavy debt repayments upon graduation.19
At the same time that students are increasingly in need of aid, tuition -- and the portion of the higher education system's budget which is dependent upon tuition -- has increased. Thirty-nine percent of the Maryland University System's budget is attributable to tuition now, compared to 32% in 1988. Likewise, 36% of community-college budgets are dependent on tuition, compared to 28% in 1988.20
As a result, from 1988 to 1998, tuition and fees for undergraduates have risen over 100%. By comparison, median family income rose 50% during that period, and the consumer price index increased by 40%.21
But even in this boom year for the state and country, the Governor has proposed an increase for higher education which is just 10% of his four year goal, reflecting how difficult it will be to achieve that goal without reigning in spending in other areas.
The largest and fastest growing competitor for discretionary funds continues to be prisons. If the state is to realistically attempt to meet the Governor's goals, a plan to reduce prison spending must be implemented.
In its 1992 Final Report, the Governor's Task Force on Alternative Sanctions to Incarceration described "Community Corrections Act Legislation" as "A statewide mechanism through which funds are granted to local units of government to plan, develop, and deliver correctional sanctions and services at the local level. The overall purpose of this mechanism is to provide a local sentencing option in lieu of imprisonment in state institutions."
The commission was careful to add that "the state would still maintain responsibility for housing serious offenders in state institutions while it allocates funds to communities to assist in the supervision of certain non-violent offenders at the local level."
Maryland needs a Community Corrections Act similar to those implemented in 17 other states. Right now, if a judge in Baltimore or Rockville sends a non-violent offender to state prison, it is free for that judge's county. But if a judge wants to place that offender in a drugtreatment program, the county generally picks up the whole tab, no just for the treatment program, but for the offender's probation supervision, as well.
That sets up a skewed incentive system that results in exactly what Maryland now has--a bloated prison system and a starving system of local treatment and punishment options. A Community Corrections Act would help redress that skewed system by providing funding to local units of government to encourage them to keep appropriate offenders in local treatment and supervision programs.
In 1993, then-Public Safety Secretary Bishop L. Robinson opined that 32% of his inmate population could be immediately paroled or put into alternative programs.23 In a national survey of prison wardens conducted by Senator Paul Simon's Subcommittee on the Constitution, the majority of wardens felt that, on average, half of the inmates under their supervision could be released without endangering public safety.24
In 1997, based on a $20,000 annual cost per inmate, Maryland spent $221 million locking up over 11,000 non-violent offenders in its prison system. If the state developed a plan to reduce that population by 5% per year, and carefully evaluate the annual impact of that plan, it would realize $11 million in gross annual savings. If the state were to reduce its non-violent offender population by half it would realize a gross savings of approximately $110 million, not including prison construction cost savings. Parenthetically, a 50% reduction in the non-violent offender population would amount to a 25% overall reduction in the state's prison population, conservative by former-Secretary Robinson's estimate.
Obviously, funds would have to be spent on supervision and treatment programs in order to safely and effectively reduce the state's non-violent prisoner population. But even if the state allocated the relatively generous amount of $50 million toward that end, it would still net over $60 million in savings.
Thirty million dollars would be sufficient to fully fund the Educational Excellence Award (EEA) -- the state's scholarship program for low and moderate income students. It would take $19 million for Maryland to be ranked 25th, instead of 33rd, in university funding amongst American states.25
In its 1998 report, the Maryland Higher Education Commission quotes Miller Williams from "Of History and Hope":
We know what we have done and what we have said,
All this is in the hands of children, eyes already set
and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become --
just and compassionate, equal, able, free.
on a land we never can visit -- it isn't there yet --
but looking through their eyes, we can see
what our long gift to them may come to be.
Maryland's struggle to become a place of justice and compassion, equality and freedom, cannot be fully pursued in an environment which prioritizes incarceration at the cost of educating its best and brightest. We hope that the findings and recommendations in this In Brief are a step toward making Maryland the land Williams envisions.
2 Southern Regional Education Board. 1997 "SREB Fact Book on Higher Education: 1996-1997. Table 11 and Table 33.
3 Ambrosio, Tara Jen, and Schiraldi, Vincent. February 1997. From Classrooms to Cell Blocks: A National Perspective. Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute.
4 Ibid. p. 6.
5 Connolly, Kathleen, McDermid, Lea, Schiraldi, Vincent, and Macallair, Dan. October 1996. From Classrooms to Cell Blacks: How Prison Building Affects Higher Education and African American Enrollment. San Francisco, CA: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.
6 Ambrosio, Tara Jen, and Schiraldi, Vincent. February 1997. From Classrooms to Cell Blocks: A National Perspective. Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute.
7 Ambrosio, Tara Jen & Schiraldi, Vincent. February 1997. Trading Classrooms for Cell Blocks: Destructive Policies Eroding D.C. Communities. Washington, DC: Justice Policy Institute.
8 Department of Legislative Services, Maryland General Assembly. Both reflect actual year spending, rather than allocations.
9 Maryland Higher Education Commission., p. 16.
10 Ibid., p. 16.
11 Updegrave, Walter L. June 1994. "You're Safer than You Think." Money Magazine.
12 Federal Bureau of Investigation. 1996. Uniform Crime Reports. Washington, DC.
13 Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Inmate Characteristics - Offense Distribution. January 1990 and July, 1997.
14 Governor's Task Force on Alternative Sanctions to Incarceration. Final Report. 1992.
15 Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Inmate Characteristics - Sex and Race Distribution. January 1990 and July 1997.
16 Maryland Higher Education Commission
17 Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Inmate Characteristics - Sex and Race Distribution.
18 Maryland Higher Education Commission.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Goodman, Peter S., and LeDuc, Daniel. January 8, 1998. "Glendening Offers Help for U-Md.", Washington Post.
23 Valentine, Paul. May 24, 1993. "You Can't Build Your Way Out", Maryland Official Says. Washington Post.
24 Simon, Paul. December 21, 1994. In New Survey, Wardens Call for Smarter Sentencing, Alternatives to Incarceration, and Prevention Programs. Washington, D.C.: Office of Senator Paul Simon, U.S. Senate.
25 Maryland Higher Education Commission.
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