Fattening the dog.

“Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.”—Mark Twain

That pithy observation should have been enough to guide the balancing act between education and crime, but alas we are slow learners. It really comes down to a choice between long term possibilities and short term emergencies. A sad commentary is that fear trumps hope nearly every time: a sort of bird in hand versus the two in the bush matter. When Mark Twain penned that aphorism of obviousisity in the late 19th century, publicly supported education was barely beginning. The incident of jails however began as soon as we came out of the caves. By the time he wrote this, the prison population in the United States stood at a meager level compared to today and the trade-off he spoke of was evident but not yet ripe.

I pondered long about how to gild this lily since much time has past and the institutions and both education and jails have changed much. For awhile I considered the statistical approach but in the end chose to follow the advice of MT— “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.” I could have followed the statistical path but that path is lengthy and besides, an elaboration wouldn’t change his pithy conclusion. However, in the interest of making this a small desert instead of a copious feast, I thought it prudent to follow another of his aphorisms—“It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” I didn’t want three weeks to pass before another post.

So here is the desert: We didn’t make the right choice, and we are now in a pickle. More than a hundred years later, we spend more on feeding the dog of prisons than on the one of educating our citizenry. And there is a “duh” here: Crime is soaring like never before, funding for police is falling, (since that comes from the same coffer as education dollars), the people we didn’t educate are now living behind bars at public expense (instead of making contributions to society), costs for building and operating prisons are busting state budgets, and prisoners are being dumped back into society.

Those are facts of our misguided choices and you can do as MT suggested: “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please” and decide for yourself if the dog is fatter.