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Predictors Of Educational Program Usage Within United States Prisons, Grant E. Tietjen

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study investigates factors that predict inmate participation in prison educational programs using the Bureau of Justice (BJS) 2004 Survey of State and Federal Inmates. I apply the theories of controlology, Marxist criminological theory, and critical education theory. I then review the literature on various types of prison educational programs. The potential predictors of educational program participation are ethnicity, age, children, marital status, class, prior education, sentence length, and type of crime. I hypothesize that people who have higher socio-economic status (SES), shorter sentence lengths, higher levels of pre-incarceration education, and inmates convicted of non-violent crimes are more likely to …