For further information on the Cornell Prison Education, see: The Cornell Prison Education Program website 'College Behind Bars.What We Do The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) creates the opportunity for incarcerated men and women to earn a Bard College degree while serving their sentences. New projects, laws help prison college programs gain steam. Could support for providing prisoners access to college- level courses be growing more widespread? Twenty- five miles from Montgomery, Ala., in the middle of the tough- on- crime, fiscally conservative Deep South, sits an unusual place of learning. A 2. 0- foot fence with razor wire surrounds the campus. Armed guards stand at the entrances. Students wear jumpsuits, with ID numbers printed on the right side of the chest. This is J. Ingram State Technical College, where every student is incarcerated. The college was created by the state in 1. It's a member of Alabama’s community college system, but does not grant two- year degrees. In response to budget cuts, Ingram suspended its associate degree offerings last year. College leaders see Ingram as part of the solution to a state prison system marred by severe overcrowding, poor inmate medical care, sexual abuse of female prisoners and the threat of a federal takeover. But being part of the solution requires adequate funding, they say. In the past several years, the college’s portion of state prison education funding has dropped by 2. Job openings have gone unfilled. The student head count has dropped almost 3. As a state community college created solely for inmates, Ingram is unique. Its struggle for money is anything but. During the recession, state corrections departments reported an average 6 percent decline in money for educational programs, according to a 2. That measures all types of correctional education funding. In many states, the trends in government support for postsecondary correctional education are even bleaker. But there are signs of a shift in momentum. Department of Education may explore the possibility of bringing back Pell Grants to prisoners, while a handful of state legislatures have considered changing laws that block prisoners’ access to college courses. There’s also a huge push from private foundations to demonstrate the successful college- in- prison models. Make no mistake - - there are significant obstacles to securing more money to educate prisoners, a population that has no political clout. That’s especially true at a time when so many government programs are still fractured by ongoing budget constraints. Tweaked and added second half of this sentence - km. Yet there’s an important window of opportunity for correctional education right now, and it's part of a larger movement to improve the country's correctional system, advocates say. There’s no longer a mystery about whether education in prison works, while there is widespread recognition - - from both sides of the aisle - - that releasing prisoners without skills or rehabilitation that will serve them on the outside doesn’t work. Every year, 7. 00,0. Within three years, 4. There’s nobody we have to convince in the correctional community,” said John Dowdell, coeditor of The Journal of Correctional Education. Experts called it a helpful - - powerful, even - - demonstration of how effective prison education can be. Of course, previous research showed that education in prison can help lead to a successful reintroduction into society. But the RAND study was a meta- analysis of research done in the past 3. The study found inmates who participated in correctional education, including remedial, vocational and postsecondary education, were 4. That means for every dollar spent on correctional education, a state corrections department would save five dollars it would have spent on reincarceration costs, according to the report.“That’s a huge cost savings,” said Lois Davis, senior policy researcher at RAND and lead author of the report. But those studies haven’t singled out how much of that boost is due to postsecondary education or other factors, such as an individual motivation or vocational training, Davis said. That’s where the evidence needs to be built up, she said, so researchers have details on the type of programs and courses that produce the best results. While Ingram is funded out of the relatively healthy state education trust fund, the state’s general fund is facing a nearly $3. State appropriations comprise about 5. Ingram’s budget, and 4. Between fiscal years 2. Ingram's total state support - - a combination of operations and prison education funding - - dropped almost 8 percent. With its current $1. To help make their case for more - - or at least more steady - - state support, Ingram officials are in the process of developing a way to measure outcomes by tracking graduates. Alabama’s overall recidivism rate is about 3. Department of Corrections annual report. The rates aren't broken out by individual institutions or programs, so the state doesn't have a rate for Ingram participants. But that percentage doesn’t tell of the complexities of measuring recidivism rates, especially when dealing with multiple agencies, said William Griswold, dean of strategic planning and education at Ingram. Definitions vary across agencies whether recidivism measures rearrest or reconviction. Different types of crimes have different recidivism rates, too. Ingram deals with individuals who are in medium- security custody and are at a higher risk to reoffend, Griswold said. Generally, individuals who enroll in programs and complete the work are radically different than the control group, those that don’t take part in available programs. That begs the question of how much the program is responsible for successful transitions compared to an individual’s motivation.
Basing decisions on recidivism also only tracks those who end up back in prison. The rates tell nothing about the others who were released, whether they continued with education, found jobs or crossed state lines and committed new crimes. Because of those challenges, some are hesitant to put so much emphasis on recidivism. Other advocates of higher education in prisons are reluctant to use recidivism rates as the litmus test for a successful program, because that discounts the other benefits of college- in- prison programs. Within the prison walls, inmates who are intellectually stimulated are less likely to smuggle in drugs or start fights, which means it can make the facilities safer for other inmates and guards, Dowdell said. Plus, the majority of incarcerated men and women - - about 9. Education can make them better parents and better citizens, advocates say. Even for those serving life sentences, education can have a profound effect on family dynamics in the communities that are overrepresented in the country’s prisons and jails. Sometimes incarcerated men in the Education Justice Project at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign are the first in their family to pursue a college degree, said program director Rebecca Ginsburg.“If the guy in prison can do it, so can his children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews,” Ginsburg said. It has potential to pull the whole family up.”All of these benefits come up again and again when talking to supporters of expanded correctional education, especially those who run private programs. And yet, it’s hard to ignore the sway recidivism rates hold with policy makers. In the RAND study, 4. Bright Spots. Within that survey, 3. Davis said. Those offerings reflect a more than 2. Newer efforts, though, are stressing clearer paths and more support for incarcerated students. The Vera Institute for Justice’s Pathways Project is in the second year of a five- year, roughly $1. Nearly 9. 00 inmates are participating in North Carolina, New Jersey and Michigan. Within those states, 1. In California, a joint report out of the law schools at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley urged better degree offerings for inmates as part of a project called Renewing Communities. The report’s recommendations include expanding partnerships between California’s community colleges with the prisons and jails in their neighborhoods, better staff training and more support services. Added this graph - km. The Ford Foundation - - a major supporter of correctional education programs - - gives money to the Pathways Project and Renewing Communities. The foundation has taken a two- pronged approach with correctional education and rehabilitation, said Douglas Wood, who works on the foundation's higher education for social justice initiative. The foundation supports private college- in- prison programs, such as the Bard Prison Initiative in New York or Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison, to help develop learning communities for best practices. But the foundation also is devoting a lot of energy to working with states, including talking with California to set up a jointly funded project based on the recommendations from the Renewing Communities report. A similar bill passed the state’s House of Representatives last year but didn’t make it out of a Senate committee. The year before the law change, 2,5. In those days, Indiana had the largest participation in postsecondary prison education of any state, said John Nally, director of education at the Indiana Department of Correction. College programming reached 1. Between 2. 00. 3 and the first half of 2. Rewrote this sentence A mere 4. More recently, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to use state money to pay for prisoners’ college education was met with immediate, fierce opposition. The political opposition is “more from a knee- jerk reaction of, . But unemployment is a significant contributor to recidivism rates, and offering two- or four- year degrees that lead to a clear set of skills and certification in specific fields is a way to boost employment of ex- convicts, she said. Moved this sentence - km. While private funding can accomplish a lot, it’s going to require public investment to bring these initiatives to scale, said Fred Patrick, director of the Pathways Project.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2017
Categories |