College Education for Inmates?

I was reading quite the interesting article by the editorial board of the New York Times today, giving the argument that inmates in prison need to be offered an education to refrain from ending up back behind bars. The article, "A College Education for Prisoners(published Feb. 16)", ultimately says that if we want to have less people in prison(and less recurring offenders), we need to have programs set in place to give them the job skills they need to enter the "real world". I totally agree with this statement, considering "more than 40% of inmates lack a high school diploma." How are these people, most also living well under the poverty line, supposed to make something of themselves in today's information society? "40% of those who are released return within three years, most for economically driven crimes." As a nation we need to be able to support them in getting the education/jobs they need to succeed(and not go back to prison). A lot, and I mean A LOT, of prison education programs were shut down in the 1990's, so legislators could prove "how tough they were on crime." In New York specifically, prison education programs went down from 70 in the 90's, to just FOUR in 2004. "The number of college degrees awarded to inmates fell from 1,078 in 1991 to 141 in 2011," according to the New York State Bar Association. This just proves how much that makes a difference in the number of return inmates New York receives every year. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, proposed that out of the $2.8 billion that taxpayers spend on the prison system, to set aside a minute $1 million for prison education programs. Legislature DID NOT like this plan, saying it was "a 'slap in the face' to law-abiding taxpayers," so the proposal was withdrawn. What they didn't know, however, was that the public actually SAVES "$4 to $5 in reimprisonment costs for every $1 it spends on prison education." I believe this is the best way to support inmates in getting the college education and job skills they need to succeed, and ultimately improve the United States as a whole. What do you think?

Life Expectancy in the U.S. Lower Than Europe?

So  I was just reading an article on CNN, and there was one that I thought you guys might find interesting. Studies have shown, based off of 2012 world average life expectancies, that the average life expectancy is about 2 years less than Europe and other developed countries. Why is that? According to Andrew Fenelon, senior author of this study, most of the gap exists in middle-age persons from age 25-65. However, Fenelon claims that another major cause of this is a significant rise in infant death in the U.S. as well. To further discover what is "killing" Americans, Fenelon looked into injuries, which are "the leading cause of death for Americans between 1 and 44 years of age." The three things most responsible for injury deaths were drug poisonings, gun violence, and car accidents. Most of these injury deaths were seemingly either accidents or suicides. Because of the abuses of drugs and alcohol and the significant rise in suicides in the United States since 1999, death rates have been on the rise since. However, if you take a look at life expectancy statistics from the 1980's, the United States outweighed most other countries. So what's changed? What has Europe done(or the U.S not done) to raise their life expectancy? And how will we, as Americans, take steps to change this? You do want a long, happy life don't you?