Illiteracy Links with crime and poverty

Those who are functionally illiterate may be subject to social intimidation, to health risks, and with various forms of stress, low income and other pitfalls associated with their disability also included due to illiteracy. The correlation between crime and functional illiteracy is well known to criminologists and the sociologists of the world. In the early 2000s it was estimated that 60% of adults in federal and state prisons of the United States were functionally or marginally illiterate, and 85% of juvenile offenders had problems with reading, writing and basic math. This shown a clear connection of illiteracy and crimes.

 Diffusion

In the U.S., according to the business magazine at the beginning of the twenty-first century adults are functionally illiterate who employed were estimated to be 15 million. The 'American Council of Life Insurers reported that 75% of companies annual ranking of the Fortune 500 provide some level of remedial courses for their employees. In the United States 30 million people (14% of adults) are unable to perform simple activities and reading every day.

Three Main parameters of Literacy:

The National Center for Education Statistics provides more details about  literacy: which has three main parameters:

• Literacy with Texts in prose for example, any newspaper article or book of fiction
• Literacy with documents  for example, graphs, tables, legal documentations
• Quantitative literacy , the disability to understand numeric, simple mathematical functions.

Each functional literacy (literacy, to be precise) has four levels:

§          lower

§          basic

§          intermediate

§          competent

To be prose literacy, for example, a degree of literacy below the base means that a person can read a short text to understand a little basic information, while a person who has a lower level in the calculation might be able to make a simple addition.

In the U.S., 14% of the adult population is at a lower level of prose literacy, 12% is at a lower level of literacy documents, and 22% at that level for the calculation. Only 13% of the population is competent in these three areas - for example, to compare the views of two different editorials, or interpret a table about blood pressure medicine, age and physical activity, or also calculate and ability to compare the price per kilo of food.