General Education

Incarcerated adults have among the lowest academic attainment and highest illiteracy and disability rates of virtually any segment of society.
Nearly three-quarters of all federal and state inmates who possessed a GED credential earned it while incarcerated. [1]
41 percent of incarcerated people in the United States have not completed high school or its equivalent, compared to only 18 percent of adults in the general public. [2]
Correctional education programs have not grown with the exploding prison population—in 1991, 57 percent of state inmates reported participating in education programs. At that time, the prison population was approximately 792,535. The number of inmates who reported participating in correctional education programs dropped to 52 percent in 1997, while the prison population of the United States grew to 1,176,564. [3]

Sources

[1] Correctional Education: Assessing The Status Of Prison Programs And Information Needs Steven Klein, et al., U.S. Department of Education, Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools (2004)

[2] Education and Correctional Populations Caroline Wolf Harlow, U.S. Department of Justice, Buearu of Justice Statistics (January 2003)

[3] Education & Incarceration Bruce Western, Vincent Schiraldi and Jason Ziedenberg, Justice Policy Institute (2003)

Facts and Figures