Prison Education and Labeling

One thing that really stuck out for me in the Silva article was the mention of the scale of intelligence on which prisoners were placed to determine whether their IQs merited effort on the part of the prison system to educate them. These labels, ranging from "above average" to "imbecile", are not only offensive in the ability-minded conscience of today, but also in the idea that there is no hope for nearly half of all prisoners to ever learn something useful. These standardized tests, as we have discussed in class, are in no way a feasible method for extracting useful data about intelligence, and, so far as I know, there is no evidence that they would have been executed under fair conditions to prisoners. It seems that these scores and hurtful labels are an excuse for us to allow prisoners to fall between the cracks without education in incarceration facilities--if they were never bright enough to be educated anyway, we don't have to worry when our rudimentary attempts to educate them are unsuccessful, or don't land released prisoners a job (likely related to unwillingness to hire former prisoners no matter their level of "rehabilitation").

I also couldn't help but be reminded of what someone in our class said a few weeks ago, that the number of beds in a state prison was based around the test scores for FOURTH GRADERS in the state's elementary schools. It's setting people up for failure in both instances--we give up on kids when they're only in the fourth grade, and allow them to fall on the school-to-prison pipeline. And, by prejudging the ability of prisoners to learn anything in their prison higher education courses, we are giving up on them without even giving them a chance in the classroom.