Should prisoners be given free education?
The history of American prison can be traced back to 1791. This is the year when the first true American prison, Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia was established (Coley & Barton, 2006) The US prisons were established to achieve three main objectives: to promote public security, to enhance prisoner’s reformation and to ensure humanity of the prisoners. Based on the last two objectives, many prisons started offering basic education in the early 1880s. However, it is until the early 1960s when the US prisons started offering post secondary education to the inmates (Coley & Barton, 2006). The federal governments provided ...
