Literacy for Life: Classroom behind bars

For Ferd Mariani, director of Carson City's adult education program that extends to prisons, the reason for educating inmates is simple.

"About 95 percent of students who are incarcerated are going to get out," he said. "The more education they receive, the more likely they are to become a better citizen and the more likely it is they won't return to a life of crime."

James Adams, 33, knows that cycle. He's lived it.

He first went to prison at 16 and has been in and out since. He didn't care that he missed out on high school and had no plans of getting an education.

"I was young and (stupid)," he said. "I just wasn't into it then, too much running around in the yard."

But now, serving his time at Northern Nevada Correctional Center, things have changed.

"Now I'm 33 years old and have a kid out there," he said. "I can't very well tell her to be going to school every day when I'm not doing it myself. I don't want her to have any excuses to drop out. I want her to be better than me."

Antonio Hernandez, 24, hopes his education will help provide a better life for him and his 4-year-old daughter once he gets out.

Kicked out of Carson High School in 2002, he struggled to make ends meet working minimum-wage jobs.

Once the baby came, living paycheck to paycheck got even harder.

Then a friend of a cousin offered him a job for more money than he'd ever made before.

"I took a chance and did it, and little by little started making good money," he said. "I ended up selling drugs in the dope game. But eventually you get caught."

At the time, he said, he saw it as the best way to provide for his family.

"Now that I'm in prison, I see things differently," he said. "I know if I wouldn't have come to prison, I'd probably be out there doing the same thing."

He's counting on his education to keep him clean.

"If they didn't have school here, I think you'd just go back to your old life," he said.

According to correctional education statistics, 70 percent of Nevada's prison inmates score on the lowest two levels on literacy tests and 48 percent are high school dropouts.

The U.S. Department of Justice reports that 68 percent of inmates are re-arrested within three years of their release.

However, Mariani said, education and other rehabilitation programs reduce the risk of re-offending and increase odds that inmates will become gainfully employed upon their release.

Inmates who receive less than 100 hours of education in prison have a 25 percent likelihood of returning. More than 300 hours of education drops the risk to 17 percent.

Extensive education and rehabilitation reduce recidivism rates by 33 percent.

Beyond being good for society overall, Mariani said, it saves taxpayer dollars.

It costs about $20,000 a year to house an inmate. It costs $1,500 per year to educate an inmate in a Nevada prison.

So, in 2007, 87 inmates received diplomas from the Carson Adult High School. Based on the statistic that 33 percent of them will not return, that's 28 inmates.

With a savings of $20,000 per inmate, that's a $560,000 savings. Subtract from that the cost of educating them at $1,500 per pupil, that's an overall savings to the state of $518,000.

But Adams doesn't need the math to convince him to continue working on his high school diploma, as well as attending the drug rehabilitation program OASIS.

"When you start warehousing prisoners, they become better criminals," he said. "We talk to each other and tell each other what we did and how we got away with it. If you're in here and you find a program to get you out of that way of thinking, it's better for us.

"I tell these kids coming in here, you gotta go to school. You ain't got it, get it."