Since 1980 prison spending rose 436% while higher-education funding fell 13%

Evidence

The public demands that criminals be put away for long stretches, but is unwilling to pay the heavy costs. Indeed, legislators get voted out of office if they raise taxes. As a consequence, prisons are draining funds for higher education. After adjustment for inflation, since 1980 spending has decreased by 13% for higher education but has swelled by 436% for prisons. California now spends more on prisons than on higher education (Sankin, 2012). As university budgets and financial aid shrinks, tuition increases are used to cover the shortfalls. The diversion of scarce resources from education to prisons drives out the needi-est students from higher education. The irony of this budgetary diversion is that education provides the best escape from crime and poverty. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1152

Categorization

• CANDY: The 13% vs 436% gap is a memorably crisp dinner-party stat about what California prioritizes.
• XREF: Connects to mass-incarceration literature and the educational-vs-carceral state debate (e.g., Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow). — connects to: US higher education policy since 1980 has followed Friedman-Becker prescriptions toward loans over grants — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 257
• DEEPTHINKING: The closing irony — that the very diversion punishing criminals starves the education that would prevent crime — packs a systemic double-blind worth sitting with.