Ebbie - "...At 567 staff per 1,000 inmates..." Thats amazing! A ratio of 2:1.

And yet they complain when teachers ask for lower class sizes!

Compare a 2:1 ratio in prisons to a 22:l ratio in the primary grades. (Dianavan)

Dianavan, I have rarely seen a more blatant abuse of statistics than that. Well, actually I see it nearly daily by politicians who use numbers for impression and not for information, but in serious discussions such a treatment of numbersshould have no place.

Other than pupils inmates don't go home after a six hour or whatever day and they don't go on vacation (if it can be prevented). You need about 5 people of staff if you want to have 1 person present all year long counting vacations, nights, weekends, holidays, sickness and other leaves.

So the real number for an informed comparison is not 2:1 but 10:1.

One more difference is that in prisons, more often than in schools, a 1:1 ratio is needed. You can tell a pupil to go to the director for a briefing and expect she does by herself, you wouldn't do that with an inmate.

The prisons population in the USA is very high. That can be debated and criticised, but propaganda based on misread statistics is not a good basis for discussion.

Wolfgang