School behind bars

Birusk Tugan

Sunday, July 23, 2000 | 10:14 a.m.

"Where the Red Fern Grows" is a story of two dogs and a boy -- a classic for children 9 through 12.

But it's the first book 21-year-old Anthony Davis has ever read.

The high school dropout is learning how to read in prison -- making up, he says, for time he wasted earlier in life.

"I was doing wrong things outside," Davis said, as he toyed with his corn-rowed hair in a small classroom where a dozen prisoners were studying at the Southern Desert Correctional Center, 35 miles north of Las Vegas.

A former student at Rancho High School, Davis was convicted of drug charges and attempted burglary in August and sentenced to prison for up to six years.

Now he goes to school behind bars along with 776 male and 56 female Nevada inmates, about 9 percent of the state inmate population, according to Glenn Whorton, Department of Prisons chief of classification and planning.

Student inmates receive help from public educators and 146 other inmate tutors -- some former student prisoners themselves.

Through a partnership between the prison department and school districts and community colleges across the state, the prisoners learn to read and write, take English as a second language and complete high school and college classes, as well as vocational programs including computer, landscaping and construction.

Davis' classmate, Antony Taylor, 21, dropped out of Western High School in Las Vegas before he was sentenced to one to three years in prison for failure to stop for a peace officer. He also received one to four years for battery by a prisoner. Taylor now hopes to get his high school diploma by the time he is released in January 2002.

Yusuf Luqman, sentenced to 20 years in prison as a habitual criminal, started adult basic education classes a year ago and now has passed his GED, a degree considered the equivalent of a high school diploma in some states, but not in Nevada.

At age 60, Luqman was recognized as the outstanding student at Southern Desert Correctional Center in May.

Before starting classes, Luqman, Davis and Taylor performed below eighth grade level, meaning they were "functionally illiterate," as are 48 percent of Nevada's inmates, according to Department of Prisons Literacy Coordinator Marta Hall.

Both taking courses and tutoring students count as work for the prisoners, so 10 days a month are cut from their sentences when they go to class at least two hours a day, five days a week, Hall said.

Davis and Taylor hope the classes give them a second chance at life. Davis plans to study business management after getting his high school diploma when released next month.

Those are goals prison officials hope all student inmates will learn along with their three R's. After all, they point out, about 85 percent of the state prison population will be released within five years, and 96 percent eventually get out.

With little or no support to rebuild their lives, four of 10 will be back behind bars within three years.

"If we don't educate them while they are here, we won't achieve our mission, which is to protect the public," Hall said.

One way to do that is through education, which surveys show reduces the recidivism rate by over 40 percent, officials say.

Raul Coello, 31, who escaped from Cuba six years ago, is now preparing himself for freedom for the second time by improving his "little bit English." Freedom is two to five years away for Coello, a college graduate who is in prison for drug trafficking.

"Raul is an excellent student," said inmate tutor Robert Johns, 62, who was sent to prison for two to five years for being an accessory to a felony. After two and a half months of tutoring, Coello is now studying sentence structure with Johns.

Tutoring helps the prisoners as much as the education helps their students, Hall said.

"Until they get involved, tutors think they cannot even help themselves, let alone others. Once they start tutoring, it boosts their self-confidence and, in the end, they learn as much as a student does."

Among those is Michael Cavarretta, a UNLV business administration graduate. In January he was sentenced to one to four years in prison for "failure to stop on a signal of an officer," and will remain in prison at least until January.

"I teach them so they can get a job and won't sell drugs when they are out," Cavarretta said.

Cavarretta said the one subject inmates don't struggle with is arithmetic.

"When it comes to drugs, they're very good at math. They know how to add and multiply ounces and dollars," Cavarretta said.

Donald McHenry, area superintendent for the department of alternative education at the Clark County School District, said 94 prisoners were given high school diplomas and 167 received GEDs from the county's three prisons in May.

In the state's five other prisons, 95 will receive high school diplomas at the end of this month.

"We save a lot of inmates," McHenry said.

It's not free, however. One year of high school for each prisoner costs the state $1,402, Hall said. Most of the prisoners graduate within two years by going to class year-round.

From pencils and notebooks to maps and computers, the school district provides the prisoners with education supplies and, most importantly, teachers. Last year 22 teachers worked in the three Clark County prisons.

Prison education is "cost-effective, pretty inexpensive," McHenry said.

But, noted Phyllis Rich, work force education team leader for the state Department of Education, "Educating a prisoner costs three times as much as it does for a free person."

College courses, provided by the state's community colleges, is free for prisoners under 25. Their education is funded by scholarships from the federal Department of Correctional Education, which gave Nevada a $74,000 grant last year.

This year, three prisoners in Southern Nevada and six in Carson City received associate's degrees. As with local school districts, the state's community colleges send teachers behind the walls for the upper-level courses.

"Teaching in a prison is not for everyone," said John Esperian, the dean of the Extension Programs at the Community College of Southern Nevada, which offered academic and vocational classes to about 250 prisoners at the three Clark County prisons this year.

"Some people are not comfortable," Esperian said. "But once you pass that initial step of going into a prison, then those people are like everybody else. They have made bad decisions and are paying for it."

Albert Davis Jr., who came from Arkansas 17 years ago to help to start the education program at Southern Nevada correctional centers, has found that to be true.

"I've never had a fight," he said. "My students respect me that well."

The county pays prison teachers "hazard pay." But Hall, who has been coordinating literacy education in Southern Nevada's prisons for three years, doesn't remember a dangerous situation.

"It's very safe to work here. We don't need hazard pay," said Davis, principal at the Southern Desert Correctional Center. "Since '83 I've had to write up maybe 10 people."

The new $100 million prison that will open near Indian Springs on Sept. 8 highlights the growing role of education in Nevada prisons. The new facility will feature an entire building dedicated to education. It has eight classrooms and two libraries -- one of them a law library.

"If they knew how to read laws, many of them wouldn't be here," Hall said.