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There is a tendency to jump to the conclusion that since many
prisoners suffer from literacy problems there is a direct
link between poor literacy and crime. However, as early as
1913 Charles Goring commented: "Many dogmatic assertions that
poverty, illiteracy, irreligion, parental neglect, etc, etc,
are causes of crime have resulted from the fact that the general
prevalency of these conditions ... has been realised for the
first time when studying criminals; and has accordingly been
regarded as peculiar to the personal histories of these individuals
only ..." (Source: 'The English Convict. A statistical
study' London: HMSO, p267). This view was reinforced by
Michael Rice's Literacy and Behaviour: The Prison Reading
Survey carried out in 1999 (as part of a PhD at the Institute
of Criminology at the University of Cambridge), which was
extended at the request of the Home Office.
One question considered was How many prisoners have problems
with reading? The researchers "found little support for
the belief that prisoners are less literate than their counterparts
in the general population. The percentages of people with
adequate reading comprehension ability in the prison population
either match or exceed those in the general population. Below
the level of adequacy, the greater number of prisoners with
little or no ability to comprehend the simplest texts corresponds
to the social class composition of the prison population.
Between five and ten per cent could be placed at the lowest
level and a further thirty per cent at an intermediate level
of competence. Between thirty and sixty per cent can cope
efficiently with everyday reading tasks." A summary of findings
is available below.
M. Rice, M. Howes and P. Connell (1998)
How many prisoners have problems
with reading?
A We found little support for
the belief that prisoners are less literate than their counterparts
in the general population. The percentages of people with adequate
reading comprehension ability in the prison population either
match or exceed those in the general population.
B Below the level of adequacy,
the greater number of prisoners with little or no ability to
comprehend the simplest texts corresponds to the social class
composition of the prison population. Between five and ten per
cent could be placed at the lowest level and a further thirty
per cent at an intermediate level of competence. Between thirty
and sixty per cent can cope efficiently with everyday reading
tasks.
What is the nature of these problems?
C Some prisoners are capable of
meeting the normal reading demands of everyday life but over-dependent
on contextual clues and guesses. This is because they have poor
decoding skills. The prevalence of such deficits in prison is
higher than in the general population but is predicted by social
class. About thirty per cent of prisoners have difficulty in
non-word reading, the standard test of decoding.
D Encoding is also a problem for
many prisoners. Between 35 and 60 per cent have difficulty spelling
not only the common irregular words that they have no difficulty
in reading but also the less common regular words.
What are their likely causes?
E Some of the likely causes
are environmental, especially those relating to low levels
of pre-reading experience. Inadequate teaching of alphabetic
skills in primary school is another probable cause. Both these
and low motivation inhibit reading. Without regular reading,
deficits in the knowledge that can be gained only by reading
further impair reading comprehension in a progressive downward
spiral.
F In reading, as in other learned
behaviours, environmental causes have constitutional effects.
For this reason, it is difficult in a cross-sectional survey
to determine whether reading problems have constitutional
causes. Inadequate verbal short-term memory, while constitutional,
might be either innate or acquired. Nevertheless, constitutional
difficulty in mastering the alphabetic system is a less likely
cause of poor alphabetic skills in the prison population than
inadequate instruction, emotional disturbance, low motivation,
and low aptitude.
G We found no support for the
belief that developmental dyslexia is more prevalent in the
prison population than in the general population. We accordingly
found no support for the claim that dyslexia entails a significantly
enhanced risk of criminality.
For further information contact the Institute of Criminology
on 01223 335 360 or visit www.crim.cam.ac.uk
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