A 2011 report by the Pew Center for Research put the average national recidivism rate at 43.3%. This means roughly 276,000 of the 620,000 prisoners that annually reenter society will commit new crimes, violate parole and return to prison. If America’s incarceration binge is to ever near an end, the above statistic is a clear indication that purging the system of uneducated, unskilled, unprepared ex-cons is the wrong way.

                There are the usual stopgap remedies for recidivism – probation and parole, halfway houses, community outreach, job placement and post-release training, family and individual therapy, and substance abuse counseling – but these services are half-measures. Recidivism must be pre-empted within the prison system by providing an education to every prisoner.

                It’s no secret correctional education programs fail to provide prisoners with the knowledge and skills necessary to enter a competitive workforce. It is also obvious the public wants little or nothing to do with funding programs for prisoners. College is viewed as a privilege rather than a necessity for survival in an increasingly technological world. Law abiding citizens who spend hard-earned cash on tuition and go into debt trying to pay for college have every right to resent prisoners who receive a free education. This is why, however, education must be viewed as a right for every person in the U.S., because it is the poorest and least educated who populate the prisons.

                As a long time prisoner who attained a privately funded associate’s degree, I can attest to the importance of a higher education and the difficulty of receiving one in prison. A post-secondary education should not be exclusive to those who can afford it when there is a glaring need for the incarcerated population to learn more, not less. Once a basic GED has been earned every prisoner in every state should be given access to (if they’ve not already) either vocational training in a specific field or a degree program.

                Prisoners with life sentences benefit from an education as much as those who will soon be released because their influence on the general prison population can supplant some prison norms. Generally speaking, prisoners with the longest sentences and time incarcerated are often role models for younger prisoners with less time. If the lifers as a group are more educated they can mentor others, providing a getter way of thinking than the short-sighted poor decisions that lead to criminal conduct and a return to prison.

                The belief that criminals deserve only punishment has led to an incarcerated population of 1.6 million U.S. citizens in 2015. If a lasting reduction is to be made, America’s punitive mentality must be paired with the ideal of reform. Ensuring public safety means more than maintaining the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world. It means rehabilitating offenders before they return to the community and habilitating those who don’t understand what it means to be a productive citizen and make a positive contribution to the community.

                Habilitating a prisoner requires teaching him or her basic family values, social etiquette, cooperation and conflict resolution skills, work ethic, the importance of morality-based decision making and critical thinking skills. This, in addition to job training and two years of college, should be required of every prisoner before he or she can be released. It is only then rehabilitation and reform become realistic goals rather than ideals few people take seriously.

                The biggest obstacle to prisoner rehabilitation is funding. Nobody wants to pay for a prisoner’s education. A possible solution to this continued lack of interest and support from the public and legislature is privatization.

                The following case study in New York is a testament to what works:

                “ . . .data shows that New York’s recidivism rate is approximately 40%. By comparison, since 1999the rate of re-incarceration dropped to only 4% for prisoners who participated in an existing post-secondary education program sponsored by Bard College at six medium and maximum security New York state prisons.” (Prison Legal News, Vol 25, No. 5).

Twenty-two New York state prisons currently offer privatized post-secondary degree bearing programs. Some of the donors are Cornell University, Bard College, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The degree programs are limited, but as community leaders recognize the value of educating prisoners more degrees will be made available.

                It is imperative North Carolina follow suit. Since the end of the Pell Grant and Spectre Fund there have been no state-sponsored degree programs in North Carolina prisons. Volunteer programs have popped up here and there, but the time has come for colleges and universities in this state to step up. There are numerous technical schools and community colleges as well as 38 sizable colleges and universities that can provide a limited number of grants for prisons in their county or district.

                The cost to each school would be minor. Consider this: if UNC Chapel Hill had 29,278 students in 2014 and 10% were external degrees, 1/10 of this number (292) could be extended to prisoners. If a large number of NC colleges were to contribute to external degrees as grants to nearby prisons, a significant impact or recidivism can be achieved. As many as several thousand 2 or 4 year degree programs would be available across the state.

                A lot of money can be saved in reducing recidivism rates. In a close security prison the average yearly cost to taxpayers per inmate is approximately $24,000. The average cost for a post-secondary education is approximately $8-10,000 per year. If 200 prisoners a year are prevented from returning to prison because they’ve been sufficiently educated and reformed, North Carolina could save $400,000 to 1.2 million every fiscal year.

                The communities who receive educated, law-abiding ex-cons benefit the most, especially if those re-entering citizens take an active role in the communities that need leadership and role models of productivity. This is how recidivism and crime are reduced. You teach prisoners responsibility then place them in a position where they can utilize those lessons.

                A major objection to establishing policy for privatized education in prison is one of investment. The benefactors who provide endowments to their alma mater may not agree that 1% of the degrees proffered by a school should be given away to prisoners. This is understandable. At some point, though, there has to be people of means willing to facilitate change to stem or reverse incarceration rates. IF this is a matter of incentive then it seems the schools providing nonprofit grants can write the amount off as a tax deduction. If this isn’t possible then it’s past time to seek legislation allowing such a tax deduction.

                In conclusion, there is no justifiable reason for the continued waste of human potential in prison when a minor amount of private resources can be used to significantly reduce incarceration rates. IF a mere 10% of the 20,000 NC prisoners who wind up recidivating each year were to become productive citizens because of the education they attained in prison, that is 2000 people who can make a difference in society. This number can be much higher though. North Carolina was “First in Flight”, let it be the first to drastically reduce its prison population and end mass incarceration.

As a Caucasian man who grew up in Maine, racism was not something I encountered or even became aware of until passing the Mason-Dixon line and getting locked up in North Carolina. This is not to say racism doesn’t exist in New England, or the people I knew held completely tolerant attitudes toward every race and creed. There just weren’t many minorities where I lived. The handful I did know – less than 10 individuals during an 18 year period – were people with names, families and histories; their race was irrelevant to me and still is.

This is how my mother raised her children. It is one of several lessons ingrained in my behavior and attitude. One time she asked me, “What race do you think Jesus is?” I knew the answer because she taught our Bible study at the Catholic church where my brother, sisters and I were altar servers. Jesus is every race.

Upon entering the NC prison system I got a crash course in racism and instantly regretted leaving the isolation and naiveté of my childhood. Prejudice was this ugly body odor that couldn’t be covered up with the deodorant of polite conversation. It permeated the air everywhere. The white guys I met would snicker and make lame jokes whenever a black guy said or did something. The black guys I met were often hostile and gave me distrustful looks having less to do with who I am and more to do with the fact I’m white.

After nearly two decades in prison I’ve witnessed every kind of prejudice and racism still baffles me at times. As a student of social psychology the “us and them” mentality is easy enough to figure at, but the unreasoning hatred that goes with it is not. Why should I care what somebody looks like to determine how I feel about him or her? What should it matter where you come from or who your ancestors are? The very idea of such a judgment is stupid, which makes the actions of Dylann Roof, and people who attitudes like his, utter idiocy.

While the civil rights era of the 60s did a lot to deconstruct and punish the most overt forms of racism in America, and today’s generation is a far cry from Jim Crow, there is still plenty of prejudice to go around. There is evidence of this every time a motorist is racially profiled or when white police officers shoot and kill unarmed black citizens again and again. These unjustifiable homicides are broad daylight lynchings without the use of a rope. One could go as far as calling it murder – in a few cases it was – and since it’s an organized effort based on a single ideology, even Jews can agree it looks an awful lot like a quiet pogrom.

The mass shooting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, SC, is the ninth mass shooting in the U.S. in eight years. Dylann Roof, a self-proclaimed white supremacist who used the Confederate flag as a backdrop for his hatred, shot and killed 9 black men and women while they attended Bible study. Though the killer had no bomb or connection to Al Quaeda and ISIS, he was no less a terrorist. Roof’s brand of ideology was homegrown, an attitude taught to him by someone in his community or the Internet.

It is fitting the national conversation on race has grown to include the Confederate flag, even if it’s to avoid a much needed talk on gun control and the 2nd Amendment. During the Civil War the rebel flag was hoisted by 11 secessionist states who withdrew from the Union because it banned slavery. Even though the flag is historic, it’s a symbol of traitors and slavers who believed African Americans were inferior human beings. Like the Nazi swastika, the Confederate flag has no business in any public place unless it’s in a museum with other Civil War relics.

I understand many people in the south don’t view the rebel flag as racist or evil, and that to them it’s nothing more than a historical symbol. If everybody felt that way maybe the flag wouldn’t be an issue, but as it stands the stars cross a field of blood – African blood – and no such ideology should be maintained by any United States citizen.

That the flag has stood so long after the end of the Civil War seems to imply one or more of the following attitudes in the federal government: leadership contains white politicians who hold and practice racist beliefs and policies that undermine the United States Constitution; the federal government holds the flag in harmless nostalgia rather than a middle finger to equality under the law; leadership is concerned South Carolina will resist total elimination of their support of slavery and begin another civil war; the federal government didn’t care until it became a convenient way of avoiding talk about domestic terrorism and the trend of mass shootings.

Considering the need for the Black Lives Matter movement after numerous incidents of white police killing unarmed black citizens – justified or not – the firestorm over the Confederate flag seems like an obvious stop along the way. How could the governor of South Carolina ignore Dylann Roof’s use of an oppressive symbol flying on capital grounds when the national outrage over another act of domestic terrorism has included the demand, “DO SOMETHING!” Nikki Haley’s proposal to ban the Confederate flag from public places is the right action, but is it enough?

Once the last physical symbol of anyone’s desire to enslave is gone; when every last white supremacist group has been put on the NSA’s terror watch list and outlawed altogether; when the dangers of engaging in racist thinking became a required course in grade school and there is no need to rely on faulty home training for habilitation, then maybe the United States can make real progress toward one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for ALL.