Breaking the Cycle: The Critical Link Between Illiteracy, Crime, and Incarceration

Exploring the Historical Literacy of Colonial America and Modern Solutions to Address Illiteracy and Reduce Crime

Photo by Gustavo Gandía Rivera on Unsplash

Several years ago, I was assigned to work with efforts to bring a community violence intervention program to a neighborhood that experienced a disproportionate level of crime and gun violence. The goal was for this to be community driven, not law enforcement driven, but we were funding this project, and we wanted to make sure that our investments were well directed. Strong partnerships were formed with community organizations, and I told the head of our key group that instead of focusing on ‘credible messengers’ and ‘violence interrupters’ that our best investment would be setting benchmarks on increasing youth literacy and curbing teen pregnancy.

Education is failing to educate

Today it is considerably less risky to propose those solutions. Information has been shared in the public forum, including the fact that 85% of ‘justice involved’ youth are functionally illiterate. Also, 70% of incarcerated adults cannot read at fourth grade proficiency.

It has worsened recently. Now 50% of high school graduates know as much math as the best third grade students. The Department of Justice states, "The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure." We know that 2/3 of students who cannot finish fourth grade reading at grade level will wind up on welfare or in jail. About 78% of fourth graders not meeting reading at grade level will never catch up.

Our nations report card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports:

“In 2022, average reading scores were lower for both fourth- and eighth-grade students compared to 2019: scores were lower by 3 point at both grades.” Another troubling fact is that grades at the school level are rising while test scores on standardized assessments are falling. In Illinois, there are 30 entire schools without a single student who can read at grade level and 53 schools with zero students who can do math at grade level.

Photo by Brett Wharton on Unsplash

A history of exceptional literacy

Colonial America was highly literate by global standards. One source notes that in 1760, 85% of the male population of New England and 46% of the female population were highly literate.

Alex Newman

writes in his book Indoctrinating Our Children to Death: Government Schools’ War on Faith, Family, & Freedom – And How to Stop It that:

This passion for literacy translated into what would become the most literate society that mankind had every produced up to that time. According to University of Montana scholar Kenneth Lockridge’s study, ‘Literacy in Colonial New England,’ 90 percent were literate by 1800, with numbers approaching 100 percent in cities such as Boston.

He also cites a study from 1812 where it was estimated that less than four young people in a thousand failed to write neatly and legibly. Contrast that with where we are today spending annually $880,000,000,000 on public schools where youth are not even instructed in how to read and write in cursive. Many won’t be able to read our founding documents.

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Break the cycle of poverty and crime with learning

We might want to look back in history to find how the polarity was completely reversed. In colonial times, the first laws were passed to hold parents accountable for the successful education of their children. Compare that with today where parents are compelled to send their children to public school, or in many states pay additionally to home-school or attend private school. Our industrial government public school model is not that old and not that effective. Almost every parent will tell you, school is not built for boys. Check out Rob Montz and

Good Kid Productions

mini-documentary on this:

(Caution: coarse language in the first 10 seconds.)

Educational and teacher national unions are barely on the side of the teachers, but they are clearly against the students and the parents as we have seen over the last eight years. School administrations have grown exponentially along with counselors and therapists probing kids without the parent’s knowledge. Classroom teachers are practicing Social Emotional Learning, which shouldn’t be done for any reason, without the sufficient training to deal with the predictable outcomes. Do you think anyone is able to focus with clarity after hearing the classmate’s story of the loss of a pet or when the police came and took my mom’s boyfriend to jail? Currently we mandate by law that youth belong in school but we neither pursue the parents or the kids when they violate this law resulting in truancy doubling to 25% in the last four years.

As with so many things in life, we need to get back to the basics quickly. At nearly a trillion dollars a year, and nearly a quarter of that wasted on the youth who are not in class, we do not need to spend more money. I imagine the local community school in New England in the mid-18^th century would offer that we focus on getting fourth grade students reading proficiently and getting math scores at grade level before passing youth on unprepared.

Having worked in ‘underserved’ communities for nearly three decades, I’ve never known a district superintendent allocate more resources to school in an affluent area at the expense of school in an impoverished area. If anything, I’ve seen the opposite. The most dedicated teachers pride themselves on working with the students who need great teachers the most.

Youth with illiterate parents rarely have someone to help them with homework. This is why it is vital that these kids take home the competencies to break this cycle. They are going to be the parents in 10 or 15 years. This is how quickly we can turn this around.

colonial New England schoolhouse

Getting back on track

One of my resources was an article with a quote from a juvenile justice intake worker who said that she reads the charging affidavit and police report to the youth as she has become accustomed to the high rate of illiteracy. She goes on to say there is such a gap in comprehension where there is a lack of understanding of straightforward terms in the narrative.

I reached out to Chief John O’Grady (ret.) and discussed this topic with him. He suggested incentivizing the adoption of audiobooks, especially in juvenile detention centers. Innovation like that can get some youth back on track, back in school and graduating with literacy.

There has never been a better time to recognize illiteracy as a root cause of criminality, delinquency and resulting incarceration. Addressing it now will do more than reduce crime. There is nothing more important for the next generation than having literate parents who have more opportunity to live in prosperity. Today we can reclaim our historical values of education and we will enjoy the benefits for decades to come.

As always, please keep all of our peace officers in your prayers.

---

Roland Clee served a major Florida police department as a Community Service Officer for more than 26 years. His career included uniformed patrol, training, media relations, intelligence, criminal investigations, and chief’s staff. He writes the American Peace Officer newsletter, speaks at public safety, recruiting and leadership conferences and helps local governments and public safety agencies through his business, CommandStaffConsulting.com.

(Note: Please excuse my break. During Thanksgiving, our family experienced a bereavement, and while it wasn’t unexpected, it still required serious contemplation and reflection. Just prior to that, I was engaged in discussion about the grace of God and I took this occasion to start a book on grace that will be published very soon. I never thought that my first book wouldn’t be about policing and public safety. Thank you for your patience and your loyalty.)

---

References

https://www.begintoread.com/research/literacystatistics.html

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading/?grade=4

https://a.co/d/a1F6YAz

https://www.literacymidsouth.org/news/the-relationship-between-incarceration-and-low-literacy

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-o-grady-96080a15/