ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Reading as an Anti-Crime Tool

To everyone for whom reading is second nature, the task would seem simple. Orange County Jail inmates were given a label from a medicine bottle, asked to read it and explain how they would give a dose of the medicine to a 4-year-old child. More than 80% failed the test.

The label reading was part of a study of 990 inmates from all five county jails that was completed last year. Even after subtracting those who knew no English, 52% of inmates tested were classified as functionally illiterate. That is why the pilot program known as Working for Inmate Literacy Now is important. The program began two months ago and is designed to teach inmates how to read.

County Jail inmates serve maximum sentences of one year; the average stay is less than 60 days. An inmate who is freed with the same minimal reading ability he had, or no ability at all, will find it tough to get a job outside. No job means no income, and the odds increase that he will be back behind bars.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department sensibly decided to determine the extent of literacy in the jail system after discovering that many inmates could not read well enough to take offered educational and vocational classes. With the study results in, the department instituted the pilot program at the James A. Musick and Theo Lacy branch jails. The courses are to be offered later in the other jails.

Working for Inmate Literacy Now is a project of READ/Orange County, a literacy program of the Orange County Public Library. The library has done good work in developing how-to-read classes in recent years to help the estimated hundreds of thousands of illiterates in the county. READ/Orange County is also a good example of the importance of volunteers in a host of programs throughout the county.

The short stay of prisoners obviously leaves little time for learning to read. But a program official notes that small progress is better than none; she said the goal was “not to teach them to read and write, but to teach them that they can.” At least one inmate has said he wanted to continue the study sessions after he finished his sentence. That’s a hopeful sign of the program’s potential to inspire inmates.