Some urban legends never die and still pop up in speeches in Pensacola.
When BeReadyKids! held its annual breakfast seeking volunteers and donations before Labor Day, one of the speakers got up and stressed the importance of helping children read because the number of jail cells built in the future is determined by how many children are not reading on grade level by third grade.
An impressive stat…if it were true. It’s not.
First, when Escambia County built its new jail that opened two years ago, no one stood before the Board of County Commissioners with a chart of the county’s third-grade reading scores to argue how many cells the facility would have.
But there’s more.
For decades, writers and politicians – and now Pensacola fundraisers – have used various versions of this urban legend. PolitiFact, Washington Post and others have repeatedly disproved that decision-makers build jails based on reading scores.
In 2013, Florida’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research stated it based estimates for future inmate populations on historical trends using the state crime rate and the number of arrests and convictions. EDR director Amy Baker said, “Educational attainment is not one of them.”
PolitiFact gave the professed jail cells-reading score correlation the “Pants on Fire!” label.