New Lessons at High Schools of Hard Knocks : Jails Emphasize Education for Juveniles

“I’m not a former baseball player,” Nathaniel Rice tells about 75 teen-age public school students as he strides back and forth across the little stage, warming up his audience for an anti-drug rally. “I’m not a former actor. I’m a former”--and he pauses for effect--”just like you.”

The 75 students in the dimly lit little gym are polite and attentive. They are also in jail--and that makes it easy for them to understand what Rice is talking about.

Rice had been in the Baltimore City Jail before--22 years ago as a prisoner. Disorderly conduct--”hell-raising”--was the charge.

Now, he is part of a Baltimore public school program that operates in the jail. The program represents one city’s reaction to the disturbing nationwide problem of juveniles in jail, an effort to prepare them for life on the outside and to prevent them from returning.

Most in Juvenile Centers

Only a small percentage of juvenile offenders--those charged with the most serious crimes--are kept in adult jails like the one here; critics of the practice are working hard to eliminate it altogether. Most of the nation’s troublesome youths are held in juvenile detention centers, where they attend “halfway schools.” Educating them full time is mandatory, even after they go to jail, until age 16 in most states, including Maryland and California.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that, nationally, about 500,000 juveniles spend varying amounts of time in public detention centers each year--133,000 in California, 8,600 in Maryland. And, when private facilities are counted, the annual figure grows to more than 800,000, several non-government research organizations said. On any given day, about 50,000 are in the centers nationwide, with another 1,500 in adult jails.

Experts say that the numbers are holding steady but that the youths’ crimes, often committed amid illegal use of drugs, are drawing increasingly longer sentences, making the need for education more crucial.

Some Common Issues

As far as the education itself is concerned, the issues are like those involving teaching on the outside: teacher competence, quality of programs, funding and parental involvement. However, concerns about jail schools are much more intertwined with the larger debates about the nation’s chronic crime problem and the justice system’s response to it.

Students behind bars present special problems to educators, such as high illiteracy and low motivation. And, of course, they have special problems. These young people face not only the daunting prospect of just growing up in a complex world, but also overcoming the stigma of early encounters with the law.

In the Baltimore jail, Darnell Burrell, 17, a soft-spoken look-alike for basketball star Michael Jordan, said the program here is working. “I have a positive attitude,” said the 11th-grader, who last May was accused of attempted murder. “I feel the classes will better my education.”

Serious Charges

Burrell is one of about 250 juveniles in the jail, including 10 young women. They all have been charged with serious crimes and await trial. In some ways, their academic routine is unremarkable; they attend class from 8:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m., studying reading, mathematics, English and computer science.

But, unlike their counterparts on the outside, they are given incentives such as cigarettes and additional visitation privileges in exchange for good academic performance and behavior. And they have daily prayer sessions.

“If we don’t correct some of their behavior, then they’re going to go back out and rob or snatch purses,” said Ernestine Holley, the jail’s director of education. She said attendance is not a problem: “About the only time anyone misses class is for a court appearance.”

Over the years, experts say, jail schools have evolved from a system that originally emphasized only discipline of unruly youths to one that now focuses on inspiring intellectual curiosity.

More Prisoners

This evolution grew partly out of necessity. As rising numbers of adults overflowed the nation’s jails and prisons and strained state budgets, educators and law enforcement officials sought ways to prevent youths from joining their ranks.

Thomas J. Johnson, an assistant superintendent in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District in California, said that a “national push on law and order” began several years ago, leading to longer juvenile sentences, but that a push for better education “lagged behind.”

At the Los Angeles County Office of Education, Ira Mattox, area administrator in the Division of Juvenile Court and Community Schools, said that during his 27 years with the agency the number of incarcerated juveniles has “gone up progressively” in the county to about 5,000. During his career, he said, the youngsters “began to stay longer” when they committed crimes, creating a greater need for educational programs.

High Illiteracy Rate

Noting that tests show that criminals are three times more likely than their non-criminal counterparts to be school dropouts and that they have an illiteracy rate five times that of the non-criminal population, managers of inmate facilities and other experts now appear to rate education as highly as they do physical control.

Nellie C. Weil, president of the National School Boards Assn., said school dropouts who become criminals are “becoming a tremendous concern” that can be addressed only in a climate of good education.

Osa D. Coffey, senior research associate at the Institute for Economic and Policy Studies, specializing in corrections and court issues, called any criminal without a high school education “a guaranteed non-employable person” who likely will return to crime.

Even the young criminals themselves realize that a lack of education “handicaps them and keeps them coming back, keeps them in bondage,” said Stephen J. Steurer, a specialist in correctional education for the Maryland Department of Education.

Other Factors

At the same time, several experts warned that education alone cannot prevent crime, that other factors--such as family influence, community support and economic conditions--come into play. Others argue that shorter sentencing is needed.

Expectations in jail schools are different from those outside. Getting a jailed youngster onto the honor roll is less important than getting him just to pick up a book, several teachers said.

“In our business we have to look to the small successes as opposed to any earth-shattering broad system changes,” Warden Paul J. Davis said at the Baltimore jail.

Prison educators say they have some advantages--smaller classes, for one--over teachers on the outside and they have no problem finding jail teachers. Also, some said, prisoners try harder because they want to get good reports so parole officers and judges will be favorably impressed.

And, citing a “captive audience,” the teachers boasted about good classroom discipline.

Principal Less Fearful

In Chicago, John W. Hahn, principal of the 285-student Cook County Juvenile Detention Center School, said that, as principal of an outside school from 1965 to 1979, “when I went into a washroom I never knew if I was going to get a shiv stuck in me. Here, I’m 90% sure that’s not going to happen because the weapons have been taken away from them.”

Still, it takes a special kind of person to teach in prison. Getting cursed is routine, several teachers said. Confronted with youths who are hostile to the educational system and believe that they have little to lose, a jail teacher must have a great deal of self-confidence, said Dianne Carter, an official in the U.S. Education Department who specializes in correctional education.

She said that, as administrator of juvenile corrections programs several years ago in Washington state, she used to tell instructors to teach “as if you only had six months to live.”

As a result, she said, they quickly found the shortest and most effective route to learning. For example, oral rather than written lessons prevailed initially because the inmates found talking easier.

Special Lessons

Also, she said, it is practical in jail schools to include lessons involving bus schedules, job interviews, “anger management” and development of social skills. To help inmates change their behavior, Carter said, some schools videotape them to show them how their body language sends negative signals.

Despite such innovations, many experts who monitor jail schools say most of them have a long way to go before they can be considered good.

“In most states, the education programs for people under 18 are a joke,” charged Alvin J. Bronstein, executive director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Darnell Burrell, the young inmate here, is convinced that the help he is getting eventually will lead to a career in business. He credited not only the program, but also his parents, Tyrone and Joyce Burrell, for “encouraging me to go on.”

Tyrone Burrell said the jail schooling already has made a difference, noting that his son’s grammar has improved. “He talks a lot better, and his letters are better,” the father said.

For his part, Nathaniel Rice won probation 22 years ago after spending 11 days in the jail here. “I cried the whole time,” he said as he continued his audience warm-up. He went on to earn a high school equivalency certificate and now sells insurance.