Correcting Students

Berzerker

Berzerker

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I had the MSNBC talking heads on today and they ran a clip of an interview with a Republican politician down in Oklahoma explaining why its hard to increase education funding - his list began with corrections.

They have to pay for the jails, courts, and cops... Thats why their schools are so underfunded. Thats why their teachers are on strike for more pay. I'd love to see analysis of state budgets over the last few decades comparing the growth in 'corrections' to educational budgets.

Seems backward to me, they take money from schools to jail young people for drugs...
 
Berzerker said:
I had the MSNBC talking heads on today and they ran a clip of an interview with a Republican politician down in Oklahoma explaining why its hard to increase education funding - his list began with corrections.

They have to pay for the jails, courts, and cops... Thats why their schools are so underfunded. Thats why their teachers are on strike for more pay. I'd love to see analysis of state budgets over the last few decades comparing the growth in 'corrections' to educational budgets.

Seems backward to me, they take money from schools to jail young people for drugs...
Click to expand...

Oklahoma has seemed backwards for a long time. Deep in the red states, backwards goes with the territory.
 
Berzerker said:
Seems backward to me, they take money from schools to jail young people for drugs...
Click to expand...

"You know it's funny when it rains it pours, they got money for wars but can't feed the poor"

~Tupac

"Terms like zero-tolerance and lock-down
Aging out, if you ask me, does not sound
Like education
But I suppose that's a cause and effect
When the city spends more on incarceration"

~J-Live
 
Last edited:
In 15 years most went to increase in healthcare costs out of the four categories I checked. Knowing what is included in what category is kind of tricky, so feel free to try to figure it out.

Based on wiki, the earliest and latest years posted to wiki. You can probably find earlier/later budgets or more detailed ones of what I used from other sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Oklahoma_state_budget
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Oklahoma_state_budget

Total expenditures
2001-5.4 billion
2015-7 billion

Education (K-12 + Higher Education), the 2001 budget has it broken down by how much was for K-12 and what was for 'higher ed', the 2015 budget doesn't have this break down on wiki.

2001-2.97 billion (55% of expenditures)
2015-3.6 billion (51.4% of expenditures)

Health and Human services
2001-1.24 billion (23%)
2015-2.2 billion (31%)

Public Safety/Safety and Security
2001-541 million (10%)
2015-665 million (9.5%)

Judiciary
2001-59.1 million (1.09% of expenditures)
2015-78.5 million (1.1% of expenditures)
 
cant say I'm surprised health care led the way... I'm googling it but earlier budgets before the drug war took root in Oklahoma are hiding from me
 
As Oklahoma deals with the teacher strike, Guam is also undergoing a fiscal crisis. Guam just approved its first ever sales tax to help its coffers. It has also passed a bill requiring the governor to cut $30 million from the budget and reorganize the government.

However, as part of this reorganization, healthcare and education have been singled out as priorities in the budget. The idea is to cut though as little as possible, if at all. At the same time, public services like swimming pools have been reopened for the good of the community.

Would that Oklahoma also recognize the value and importance of education.
 
I hate to assume continuity in those budget numbers but education went from 1.183b in 1983 to almost 3b in 2001 and 3.6b in 2015

Corrections went from 81m in '83 to 541m in 2001 and 665m in '15

Its possible the 'security'/safety budget in more recent years includes more than corrections, but those numbers do show quite a jump in jailing people, like an 8x increase while education tripled.
 
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for today.
Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a life time.
Don't teach a man to fish, he'll steal your fish.
You can put him in jail, where you'll pay for his fish for a life time.
 
Well, there is that.
 
I simply cannot fathom why state lawmakers aren't universally behind the idea of the federal government paying for everyone's health care.
 
One thing that has to be factored in when looking at state budgets is that a lot of the income is based on expenditures. Yes, health care costs as a percentage of spending rose the most, but that was offset by increased federal funding for healthcare. That increased income couldn't be redistributed at will.

Anecdote illustrating a similar "budget demonstration argument":

Spoiler :
When I was railing at my city government for contracting law enforcement service from the county sheriff's department eventually someone presented a comparison of what comparable sized cities with their own police departments budget to pay for them and what my city pays the county under our contract. The difference was HUGE and that was expected to settle the question, since we clearly just couldn't afford it. I backed off, because I had already been convinced by other points that I wasn't going to get anywhere. But I did go back to the person who had compiled the comparison data after everyone's tempers had cooled and let her know that she hadn't succeeded in playing me the fool.

Her spending data didn't account for the fact that the cities she cited paid for their police departments using federal grant money that my city doesn't get because we don't have a police department. Forming our own police department would, no argument, involve a vast increase in spending. But it would also instantly produce a comparable amount of revenue.
 
Berzerker said:
I hate to assume continuity in those budget numbers but education went from 1.183b in 1983 to almost 3b in 2001 and 3.6b in 2015

Corrections went from 81m in '83 to 541m in 2001 and 665m in '15

Its possible the 'security'/safety budget in more recent years includes more than corrections, but those numbers do show quite a jump in jailing people, like an 8x increase while education tripled.
Click to expand...

'Security/safety' no doubt includes more than just department of corrections.
Number of inmates less than tripled from 1983 to 2015
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oklahoma_Prison_Population.svg
from ~250 to ~700 per 100,000 population

The 'average' state prison population went from ~150 to ~425 (in 2010) so it's not too far off the national average (in terms of increase, but I do note it was higher than average in 1983 and is still above average).
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/overtime.html

So prison population certainly did not multiply by 8.

Wait until you see the 2019 Department of Corrections budget..... 1.53 billion (because they want to build two new facilities) whether that is to replace outdated ones or to handle overcrowding I don't know. Without those it would be 485 million (which includes 107 million to repairs of current facilities)

http://doc.ok.gov/odoc-2019-budget-...s-2-medium-security-prisons-expanded-programs
 
Education funding correlates inversely with incarceration rates or so says reddit.
 
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