How Much We Spend on Prison vs. Education

Jan. 29, 2015

What the U.S. spends on imprisonment vs. education, in one startling GIF Good morning! Did you know that the U.S. spends way, way more keeping someone alive in prison is than on educating them? The GIF below uses data from the Vera Institute of Justice's 2012 "Price of Prisons" report and 2012 U.S. Census data on public school costs. (Several states did not participate in the survey.) You can see that average resources annually devoted to prisoners easily outpace resources for students: "In dozens of states, the cost of imprisoning someone is far more than double or triple the cost of educating a student," writes Mic's Zeeshan Aleem. "Perhaps if more money were spent on creating and sustaining an education system that met all of its students' needs, we wouldn't need to spend so much money on putting people behind bars After more than 50 years, these civil rights icons are finally getting the justice they deserve The "Friendship Nine," named because eight of the men were students at Friendship Junior College, went to jail after staging a sit-in at the segregated McCrory's lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1961. More than 53 years later, Reuters reports officials decided that the time had come to make it clear that protesting against segregation is no crime. + Judge John C. Hayes III, the nephew of the judge who presided over the original trial of the Friendship Nine, signed an order vacating the convictions, saying: "We cannot rewrite history, but we can right history."

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Photo of the Day On Monday, NASA researchers were treated to an amazing light show right here on Earth. A team launched a series of rockets high into the Alaskan sky right in the midst of a dazzling northern lights spectacle. It made one breathtaking scene and reminded us how small we humans really are compared to the awesome grandeur of space.

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