| Although a multitude of research has focused on the relationship between prison education programming and recidivism, limited research has been devoted to developing and understanding the self-selection process inherent in prison education. This lack of research has raised questions about the causal nature between prison education and recidivism. These questions cannot begin to be answered without examining the factors linked to inmate participation in prison education. By investigating inmate associations with primary groups and secondary organizations likely to provide cultural capital useful in educational pursuits, I explain why some inmates participate in prison education and others do not. My final analyses rely on a series of logistic regression models constructed by using representative samples of the U.S. prison population at three separate points in time (1979, 1991, and 1997), each of which was established by the United States Department of Justice. The results of these analyses show that inmates who participate in educational programming while incarcerated differ in significant ways from those inmates who do not participate in educational programming. The influence of secondary organizations dramatically distinguishes inmates who participate from those who do not participate. Primary group and demographic factors, however, do not substantially distinguish these two categories of inmates. These results indicate that prison education and traditional education may be separate domains of research, requiring their own perspective. Suggestions are made on how to motivate inmates to participate in educational programming. |
