Blanco works with the UC Students Association as part of the UC
and State Unit of the USAC external vice president’s
office.
By Jackie Blanco
“Put your money where your mouth is” is the
proverbial saying uttered by politicians when debating the
government’s priorities.
To measure whether an issue is a top priority, it would do well
to track the money being spent on implementing and enforcing that
policy ““ a rather valuable concept when comparing the amount
of money California spends on education, as opposed to prisons.
Let’s start by doing some math.
Gov. Gray Davis vetoed $7 million out of Youth and Adult
Correctional Services, while taking $178 million out of Higher
Education in the 2001-2002 budget.
According to the 2000 California Statistical Abstract,
California has the highest enrollment in higher education in the
country, but ranks 42 in average expenditure per pupil in average
daily attendance ““ $5462.
Between 1990 and 1997, African American enrollment in CSU and UC
schools decreased from 8,974 to 8,797. At the same time, the total
number of incarcerated black males increased from 32,145 to 44,617.
The ratio of imprisoned African American males to those in
universities is 5:1, while that for Latino men is 3:1.
If we regard education as a top priority, then why are our
politicians reducing money that is dearly needed in higher
education? As the state with the highest enrollment in higher
education, why are we squandering our money on prisons?
You may wonder why I would also list the ratio of African
American men incarcerated with the numbers on prison spending.
Given how California has increasingly spent more money on prisons
than on higher education, the intertwined issue of our youth of
color being imprisoned for nonviolent crimes as opposed to being
rehabilitated deserves scrutiny as well.
This calls for more math.
Nationally, drug offenders are the largest growing population of
inmates, increasing by 510 percent from 57,975 in 1983 to 353,562
in 1993. African American males constitute 13 percent of all
monthly drug users, but represent 35 percent of arrests for drug
possession, 55 percent of convictions and 74 percent of prison
sentences.
As far as rehabilitation goes, one in 10 (9.7 percent) inmates
in 1997 had received drug treatment since admission to prison,
which is down from one in four (24.5 percent) in 1991. Although
these statistics are from the mid-1990s, these numbers still hold
relevancy since this pattern of incarceration has not changed
significantly.
The problem is that we have more drug offenders going to prison,
but less that are leaving rehabilitated which increases their
chances dramatically for starting the cycle over again.
Incarcerating drug offenders for long periods of time while not
giving them drug treatment is not solving “the drug
problem” in America.
In fact, as if keeping people in prisons and out of education
weren’t enough of a barrier, this exclusion from higher
education is being done systematically through an amendment in the
Higher Education Act of 1997, which says that people who have been
convicted of a drug offense are not able to receive federal
financial aid for a certain amount of time. This adds an even more
disturbing twist to an already dark problem. Through the Higher
Education Act, they are also faced with another barrier between
them and a future in higher education.
You may say, “How does this apply to me as a student at
UCLA?” Instead of spending more money on your college
experience, the state is funding the building of yet another
prison, Delano, which could cost upward of $335 million. Do we
really need another prison to house drug offenders who are not even
being rehabilitated? We really need to examine and question these
broader issues that may seem external but really do have a profound
impact on our own campus.
Putting our money where our mouth is means that we must be lying
if we said that education was one of our top priorities. If we
truly cared about education, we would also care that some people
are just not being a fair chance, even within a systemically
stratified society, to further their education or even to overcome
a drug problem. If higher education truly is a marketplace of ideas
and perspectives to come together to either clash or coincide, then
shouldn’t we scrutinize how this prison problem criminalizes
a large segment of our youth?
Instead, they should be provided with resources and solutions to
be able to be consider even applying to college, where they could
contribute their own experience to a marketplace of free-flowing
ideas. That’s why we should care about youth of color being
denied access to education through a biased system. Instead of
giving them opportunities to further their education, or at the
very least, rehabilitation to break the cycle, they are locked up
with little hope for the future.