EDUCATION AND PAROLES MUST GO HAND IN HAND

Although not a new idea, new proposals put forth by an advisory council on literacy that would require Missouri prison inmates to get a high school education as a condition of their parole deserves implementation in one form or another.

The Governor's Advisory Council on Literacy in 1989 came up with 30 action plans on education, two of which dealt with education of prisoners. One plan says that by 1995 prison officials should provide sufficient instruction so that 90 percent of inmates who are functionally illiterate achieve an eighth-grade level of education before they are paroled; the other urges that by 2000 all capable inmates earn a High School Equivalency Certificate (GED) before being granted parole.

Some candidates in next year's gubernatorial election are talking about implementation of programs that would require education as part of prisoner rehabilitation. One is Secretary of State Roy Blunt, who chaired the literacy council.

With 85 percent of Missouri's 12,000 inmates not possessing a high school degree, advocates of mandatory high school instruction in prison argue convincingly for the requirement. It fits well within the prison system's current emphasis on prisoner rehabilitation.

It is not possible, of course, to require that every prisoner receive a GED before being paroled. After all, not all prisoners are functionally literate enough to do so. They could not be expected to meet the requirement.

And not all would be in prison long enough to achieve a GED. With overcrowded prisons, early paroles have become a means of keeping prison doors open to all those who owe society debts for their wrongdoings. Ninety percent of all prisoners now are paroled after serving just a third of their sentences, and, in most instances, that would not permit sufficient time for a high school education.

There also are those prisoners who, although capable of achieving a high school education, refuse for one reason or another to learn or otherwise cooperate in efforts aimed at their rehabilitation. For those prisoners, mandatory education, or any other effort at rehabilitation, will not work. But a prisoner who does not want to better himself in prison will not better himself on the outside, and he does not deserve to be paroled.

Sufficient numbers of prisoners would study with the reward being early release, and that would keep criminals flowing through the state's prisons.

Those who see the benefits of an education, and are capable of achieving studies toward a GED, should be required to work toward that goal. If there is insufficient time during their prison stay, they should be required, as a condition of their parole, to continue to work toward the degree when they are freed.

Society would be better served through better educated parolees. They, in turn, would stand a better chance of becoming productive people.