Social Issues: Prisons or Schools?

 

Prison overcrowding is a huge problem in the state of California. While I love California and wouldn't live anywhere else, it has it's issues. Currently there are 1.96 million incarcerated in United States prisons, the largest prison population in the entire world. In California, there are 170,000 living in prisons designed to hold half that many. The state is also spending $14 billion on keeping the convicted in prison. This is ten percent of the state budget. Thus, in 2009, California legislature considered letting 27,000 of them go. Due to harsh laws that send people to prison for things like petty theft and the possession of drugs, California prisons are overflowing. As a UCLA student, I have been feeling the strong aftershocks of budget cuts from the public school system. The education and prison systems are competing for the state budget. Which system do we give the money to? I firmly believe that education is the answer to many of our problems and that like health care, obesity, and prevention, keeping people out of prisons starts when children are young and impressionable.

What bothers me when I read about things that are wrong with the world is the fact that writers don't give you a way to help or change things. So how can you get involved in this issue from the grassroots level? Volunteer with Books Not Bars. Books Not Bars is an action center that promotes urban peace and hopes to replace juvenile prison with rehab centers and community support groups. Chatting with a friend who had grown up in an inner city neighborhood and had been to prison, I learned that children grow up idolizing the men around them who usually had been to prison before. In many rough neighborhoods and especially gangs, going to prison earns you respect. What kids need is someone to show them that committing crimes and doing drugs is not the way to gain respect. I am going to apply to UCLA's mentorship program in the fall so that I can continue working with the underprivileged that attend UCLA’s UniCamp, a program that I am a counselor for. Consider mentoring a child and leading them to the right path. Mentors have huge impacts on their mentee’s lives and often times the mentees attend college because their mentor encouraged them to apply. This problem can be solved but we cannot sit around and blame legislators and whine and complain because the state seems to be going down the drain. Action is the only way to a solution.


For more information on prison overcrowding, visit http://www.takepart.com/lists/the-basics-prison-overcrowding/53623