“Gov. Charlie Crist is balking at temporarily adding a penny to the state sales tax to stem the brutal shortages that systems around the state face. But he shouldn't balk at spending that extra penny on education. What Crist ought to balk about is the millions the state will have to spend if it doesn't. Last year, The Pew Center on the States released a report on the growth of prisons. And, just as the census figures revealed Florida's embarrassing 50th place ranking in education spending, Pew yielded yet another shameful figure: Between 1993 and 2007, Florida's prison population grew from 53,000 to 97,000. That was the largest increase among the states. Corrections also consume 9.3 percent of Florida's general fund expenditures -- the second highest percentage among the states. For every dollar Florida spent on higher education, it spent 66 cents on incarceration, the report says. We're already past that extra penny on the sales tax for education. Reams of studies show that education -- especially early childhood education -- is a strong deterrent against youths resorting to crime, and that a disproportionate number of inmates in the prisons are illiterate or poorly educated. Yet, rather than invest a penny for a little while to educate kids, it seems that lawmakers would rather spend millions to clothe, house and feed them when they wind up incarcerated. That makes no sense.”
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Read the entire column and post a comment on jacksonville.com.
http://www.jacksonville.com/2009-03-21/sto...good_investment
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Thanks to Mark Pudlow for the clip and the lead.