The Null Device

Illiteracy breeds felons

According to Neil Gaiman, prison companies in the US use juvenile illiteracy levels to predict how many prison cells to build:

At the Publishers' Lunch I attended last week, Joel Klein mentioned that the people who build private prisons in the US use third grade (that's about age eight for the non-Americans) illiteracy levels as their key to how many people are going to be in prison in ten, fifteen years, and how many prison cells they're going to need to build.

Thanks to Loki for digging that fact up.

There are 1 comments on "Illiteracy breeds felons":

Posted by: steff
http://ofterdingenandkropotkin.blogspot.com/
Mon Mar 14 06:46:11 2005

Maybe while Bono and P. Wolfowitz lead the third world out of financial misery they could also address literacy issues ? ANd provide universal access to Ikea & Starbucks. Just a thought.

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