A recent study by Luke Sibieta published on the website of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) sparked my interest looking a bit deeper at the numbers of school funding per learner in the UK and US. The result of this can be found below.

Comparing the expense of imprisoning people with the expenditure on educating educating had me seriously question the priorities of our government in countries that claim to be advocates of personal freedom and liberties.

Talk is cheap, but these governments spend more money on taking someones freedom than they spend on educating them and enabling them to be free.

Reallocating money from one block to another however, cannot mean we cut funding on one end to finance expenditure on another. Considering the state prisons are in, how about we spend more on prison reform, more on prevention and rehabilitation and (by the virtue of shrinking prison population) less on incarcerating a significant proportion of our population?

Looking at the failure of our education system over the last 18 months I suggest drastic reform is overdue. I would argue that reducing expenditure on imprisonment while increasing funding for education are self-re-enforcing with obvious benefits for the taxpayer and society as a whole.

After running these numbers, I do want to discuss this further with relevant experts.