I.

INTRODUCTION

One of the foremost duties of a responsible society is to educate its citizenry. In the United States, it can be argued that educating our youth is an indisputable “given,” something to be taken for granted. We send our children to preschool, to grade school, to junior and senior high school, and, sometimes, to college or to some other postsecondary schooling such as trade school. Similarly, the importance of adult education is more and more often acknowledged and appreciated. Despite this strong emphasis on education, however, one group for whom education is only beginning to earn the attention it deserves is incarcerated youth.

Teenagers and young adults (ages 16 – 24) are being incarcerated at an alarming rate. In fact, the number of youth under age 18 incarcerated in state prisons has more than doubled in a five–year period (Bureau of Census, 1993). Despite the causes of and reasons for incarceration, the fact remains that these young people do not have ready access to traditional venues of education due to their incarceration. It is sadly ironic that a population so badly in need of guidance, perhaps more so than their nonincarcerated peers, is less apt to receive proper attention.

There are a variety of findings that suggest that incarcerated youth are indeed more in need of guidance than their nonincarcerated counterparts. For example, several studies indicate that a significant percentage of incarcerated youth (in one study as high as

75 percent) are with disabilities or have below–average cognitive abilities. In most traditional schools, a student with such a deficit probably receives special education to hone reading, writing, and arithmetic skills. Incarceration makes a student no less deserving of the same treatment.

In addition to basic academic competencies, many incarcerated youth are in need of other skills, particularly certain life–management skills. The need for decision–making skills, parenting skills, alcohol and other drug education, and transition skills is made clear by several alarming statistics:

• Nearly 70 percent of incarcerated youth in New York State are parents.
• 92 percent of incarcerated youth were nonvirgins, 60 percent never or seldom used condoms, and only 16 percent used birth control for first intercourse (Melchert and Burnett, 1990). A study that took place in a New York women’s prison indicated that 20 percent of the women tested positive for HIV (Ragghianti, 1994).
• Nearly 2/3 of the 450,000 offenders in state prisons are substance abusers (Wagoner and Piazza, 1993).
• New York criminal justice agencies estimate a recidivism rate of 72 percent to 76 percent for youth and adults (16–24) incarcerated in county correctional facilities.

Addressing these issues, which are but a portion of the challenges faced by incarcerated youth, can seem overwhelming not only to the incarcerated youth themselves, but also to their service providers. In addition to the diversity and quantity of problems, educators and other service providers are hampered in their efforts by a variety of other barriers. The uncertainty and short length of incarceration, lack of funds, overcrowding, and lack of support from other key players in the correctional facility are but a few constraints with which many service providers must work.