Adult basic education keeps youth out of crime

A recent study by Marni Brownell and colleagues at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, titled Crossover Kids in Manitoba: The Intersection of the Child Protection System, Youth Criminal Justice System and First Nations Identity, found that First Nations youth removed from their homes and placed in the child welfare system are more likely to end up being involved in the criminal justice system than to graduate high school. This is a deeply troubling finding.

Colonialism and racism and the intergenerational impact of residential schools have weakened Indigenous families, leading to out-of-home care, poor school outcomes and increased crime.

If families could be strengthened, their children would do better in school and would be less likely to be involved in criminal activity. A recent study by the Manitoba chapter of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows that one way to strengthen families is to get more parents involved in adult basic education.

Adult basic education includes adult learning centres which offer the mature high school diploma to adults who have not previously graduated, and adult literacy programs that bring adults’ literacy and numeracy skills to a high school entry level. Indigenous people are involved in adult basic education at a rate two and a half times their share of the population.

In the recent study, graduates from five adult learning centres in different parts of Manitoba were surveyed in early 2025. They were asked questions related to what they were doing before entering an adult learning centre, and what they are doing upon graduation.

Among the many positive outcomes that were identified in the study — reduced involvement with social assistance, increased full-time employment, improved incomes, for example — was clear evidence that graduation from an adult learning centre strengthens graduates’ families.

When the 292 graduates — 45 per cent Indigenous — were asked if they were happier now than when they started at the learning centre, if their children benefited because they as parents had earned their mature high school diploma, and if they felt like they were on their way to a good life, approximately 90 per cent said yes to each. These responses are evidence of stronger and healthier families.

Children raised in families where parents are involved in education and believe they are on their way to a better life — i.e., in stronger, happier, healthier families — are less likely to be involved with the child welfare system, more likely to graduate high school and less likely to become involved in crime.

In other words, one way to keep young people out of crime is to get their parents into adult basic education.

Last year 1,100 Manitoba adults graduated with their mature high school diploma. Over the next decade, that’s 11,000 Manitobans whose families will be strengthened and whose children will do better in school and will therefore be less likely to be involved in crime.

Manitoba spends approximately 30 times more to keep one inmate in a provincial jail than it does to support one adult to finish high school. Better to invest in parents’ efforts to complete high school so that their children will do better, than to pay much more when those young people end up in prison.

While not the solution to crime, adult basic education is an important part of a solution. If the province were to invest in it consistently over time, if it were, for example, to double the budget for adult basic education — there is a large unmet demand for adult basic education — it would produce a noticeable, positive effect.

The provincial budget of this successful program is about $21 million per year. To double the annual investment in adult basic education would cost a tiny fraction of Manitoba’s budget. But can the province of Manitoba afford to double the budget for adult basic education, given these difficult economic times?

Yes, it can. The CCPA study shows that adult basic education moves people off social assistance and into full-time employment at a rate such that the program effectively pays for itself.

In other words, what we invest in adult basic education, we get back in reduced costs and increased income tax revenue. Doubling the small budget would mean that 2,200 adults would graduate each year, 22,000 over a decade, 55,000 by 2050.

Those 55,000 graduates, disproportionately Indigenous adults, will be creating happier and more stable homes that will move young people off the streets, into school and away from crime.

Why then is the province not investing more in adult basic education?

Jim Silver is professor emeritus at the University of Winnipeg and a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba. He is the author of Fiscal Benefits of Adult Basic Education in Manitoba, available at www.policyalternatives.ca.