Recent expansions in prison school offerings and the re-introduction of the Second Chance Pell Grant have heightened the need for a better understanding of the effectiveness of prison education programs on policy-relevant outcomes. We estimate the effects of various forms of prison education on recidivism, post-release employment, and post-release wages. Using a sample of 152 estimates drawn from 79 papers, we conducted a meta-analysis to estimate the effect of four forms of prison education (adult basic education, secondary, vocational, and college). We find that prison education decreases recidivism and increases post-release employment and wages. The largest effects are experienced by prisoners participating in vocational or college education programs. We also calculate the economic returns on educational investment for prisons and prisoners. We find that each form of education yields large, positive returns due primarily to the high costs of incarceration and, therefore, high benefits to crime avoidance. The returns vary across education types, with vocational education having the highest return per dollar spent ($3.05) and college having the highest positive impact per student participating ($16,908).

最近监狱学校服务范围的扩大和第二次机会佩尔助学金的重新推出，更加需要更好地了解监狱教育计划对政策相关成果的有效性。我们估计了各种形式的监狱教育对累犯、释放后就业和释放后工资的影响。我们使用从 79 篇论文中抽取的 152 项估计样本，进行了一项荟萃分析，以估计四种形式的监狱教育（成人基础教育、中学、职业教育和大学）的效果。我们发现监狱教育减少了累犯并增加了释放后的就业和工资。参加职业或大学教育项目的囚犯受到的影响最大。我们还计算了监狱和囚犯教育投资的经济回报。我们发现，每种形式的教育都会产生巨大的积极回报，这主要是由于监禁成本高昂，因此对避免犯罪有很大好处。不同教育类型的回报各不相同，其中职业教育的每美元支出回报最高（3.05 美元），而大学教育的每名学生参与的积极影响最高（16,908 美元）。