Education Falls Below Prisons In State Budget

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Study: Incarceration Costs Can Undercut Other Priorities

Connecticut is one of four states in the nation spending more money on its prison system than on higher education, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts study released Thursday.

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In Connecticut, taxpayers pay $1.03 toward prisons for every $1 spent on higher education. In the Northeast as a whole, from 1987 until the present, inflation-adjusted spending on higher education dropped 5.5 percent while prison spending rose 61 percent, according to the Pew findings.

“We didn't just wake up this morning and find ourselves here,” said Adam Gelb, project director for Pew's Public Safety Performance project. “This is a milestone that the nation has been approaching for a long time. Getting tough on criminals has gotten tough on taxpayers.”

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Fleischmann believes that if more people had access to higher education, fewer of them would be in prison.

Conneticut - The Day