Every Time You Open A Prison...

...you close a school."  - Victor Hugo.

"Why is it considered morally offensive and economically unwise in this country to give a poor person a few dollars more than $13.22 per day, but ethically appropriate and fiscally sensible to incarcerate a poor person at an average cost of $55.18 per day?" - Jens Soering, An Expensive Way to Make Bad People Worse.  (Click here for Wikipedia's article on Jens Soering.)

Hugo is obviously being provocative; education does not guarantee moral goodness.  And Soering is similarly making a comparison that leaves out the important fact that criminals freely choose to commit their crimes.  Nevertheless, good education does create opportunity, whereas inequality in education seems like an invitation to the poor to continue to consider themselves to be perpetually unequal to the wealthy and so perpetually unable to advance economically without crime.

Selah.