The Trenton Times published the following opinion piece on January 5, 2014. To read the full article, click here.
Opinion: By improving N.J. education, we can narrow the school-to-prison pipeline
By Times of Trenton guest opinion column
on January 05, 2014 at 5:10 AM, updated January 06, 2014 at 10:13 AMBy Connie Goddard
“The surest but most difficult way to prevent crimes is by perfecting education,” noted an 18th-century writer known as the father of modern criminology. The comment appeared in a paper written last month by a student taking a research writing course at East Jersey State Prison in Rahway, a course offered as part of the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons (the NJ-STEP program described in The Times, Dec. 16). This belief about crime prevention has been widely shared in centuries since. While he headed the public school system in Chicago, current U.S. commissioner of education Arne Duncan was fond of saying: “It’s schools at the front end or prisons at the back end.”
Teaching in the STEP program for the past six months has been an instructive experience. This fall, two dozen program participants and I investigated connections between education and incarceration; they did commendable work, combining contemporary studies, research and commentary along with aspects of the historical record and their own experience.