The solution to crime is education. It&8217;s one of those notions that seems common sense and logically flawed, simultaneously.

But it&8217;s something to consider.

The next time you step onto on a college campus or even cheer for your favorite team, think about an odd statistic that shows that your favorite university is connected &8212; in reverse &8212; with crime.

The hallowed halls and manicured campuses of Ole Miss, Southern Miss, Mississippi State and Alcorn State universities may seem far removed from hard-scrabble, delta landscape of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. But the groups are interconnected statistically in a way and both groups certainly compete for taxpayer dollars this time of the year as state budgets are formed.

The conflicting revelation occurred to me as Dr. Thomas Meredith, the commissioner of the Mississippi Board of Trustees of the State Institutions of Higher Learning, spoke to a group of academic and business leaders connected to Alcorn State University last week in Vicksburg. Meredith quoted some alarming statistics:

4Approximately 75 percent of Mississippians sentenced to prison for the first time had not attended any college.

4Some 50 percent of those new prisoners didn&8217;t graduate from high school.

4The costs of education are far less than the costs of incarceration.

4Mississippi Department of Corrections records show that in 2005, incarcerating an inmate for one year cost state taxpayers $13,406.

4For the same cost almost three people could be educated in Mississippi&8217;s public schools.

Those figures are pretty staggering.

But it raises the question: Is an education really the key to reducing crime?

&8220;Instead of asking, &8216;why get a degree?&8217;&8221; Meredith said, referring to what he hopes more students and parents ask themselves. &8220;The better question is, &8216;Can you afford not to?&8217;&8221;

Perhaps, some people are just destined to criminal behavior, but almost certainly some of them are not bad people, per se. Perhaps a few of them might have gone a different way in their lives if they&8217;d not slipped through the educational cracks.

If half of the new prisoners are high school dropouts, the logical next step is to try and reduce the number of dropouts and see if doing so eventually results in a reduction of crime, too.

The state, under the guidance of State Superintendent of Education Dr. Hank Bounds, is working toward that. Bounds has a plan for working with community and junior colleges such as Copiah-Lincoln Community College to turn those would-be dropouts into successful graduates.

&8220;What could Mississippi be if we decreased the number of dropouts?&8221; Meredith asked?

Only time will tell if those plans will yield a fundamental change to both the state&8217;s educational system and, perhaps, its quality of life, too, through reduced crime.

But first, education reformers such as Bounds and Meredith have to continue to preach and evangelize the cause of a combined educational funding effort.

For years, elementary and secondary educators, community and junior college leaders and higher education leaders have worked somewhat independent of each other.

That must stop.

&8220;When they come together in a collective sense, there is no problem we can&8217;t solve,&8221; Meredith said. &8220;What we&8217;ve got to get away from is being pitted against each other for funding. That&8217;s the way you can plan more effectively.&8221;

The clock is ticking on the future. Meredith said the U.S. Labor Department predicts that by 2020, the U.S. will have more than 12 million more skilled jobs &8212;requiring a college education &8212; than people qualified to fill them.

The question Mississippians must quickly answer is: Do we want our youth working at those jobs or working to finish their sentences in places such as Parchman?

Kevin Cooper

is associate publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or

kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com

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