Prison Education Programs
Highlights from the Prison Education Project’s Spring Evaluation Report
The Prison Education Project (PEP) utilizes faculty volunteers and university students to provide education in 12 California correctional institutions. To date, PEP has reached 6,000 inmates since 2011, making this initiative the largest volunteer-based prison education program in America. The ultimate goal of PEP is to flip the school-to-prison pipeline around, creating instead a prison-to-school…
Read MoreThe First Step Act: A Good First Step Indeed!
If it passes, the First Step Act will dramatically change life for thousands of inmates in America and will tackle, head-on, some of the problems that lead people to prison and keeps them there. There are many long-overdue items on the Act that includes banning the shackling of pregnant and postpartum women (was a woman…
Read MoreNorthwestern Prison Education Program Encourages Contemplation
Recently, we discussed the positive role liberal arts education has in prisons. Today, we take a closer look at the Northwestern Prison Education Program, which provides tuition-free liberal arts degrees to inmates in Illinois Stateville Correctional Center (SCC). Northwestern launched as an institution for higher learning in 1855. Five years prior, nine men sat down…
Read MoreWhy Teach Liberal Arts in Prison?
Liberal arts. Anyone studying this subject is frequently acquainted with an eye roll followed by, “and how are you supposed to get a job with that?” Liberal arts has a bad rap, and that is very underserved. The truth is, liberal arts is among one of the oldest courses of study in the world! While…
Read MoreWhat is the Prison Studies Project?
The Prison Studies Project (PSP) is an initiative that created a nationwide directory of higher education prison programs in the United States. The index was completed in 2008 and is updated regularly. The project was completed in partnership with the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice. According to PSP’s website, “PSP aims to…
Read MoreNew Grant to Support Prison Education in New York State
The Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) provides college degree courses for persons in upstate New York prisons. Believing that “any person can find instruction in any study,” the leaders of CPEP see this education as a fundamental part of any successful re-entry program. CPEP launched after an act of Congress and the resulting legislation ended…
Read MoreCongress Weighs Future of Second Chance Pell Grants
In 1994, as part of the Clinton-era tough on crime Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, Congress stripped from the Higher Education Act of 1956 (HEA) prisoners’ eligibility for federal Pell grants for lower-income students. But in July 2015, the Obama Department of Education (DOE) created a pilot Second Chance program under a different HEA…
Read MoreSitting Pretty: Vocational Prison Education Preps for Life After Prison
By Christopher Zoukis Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, California has a beauty salon. It started as a vocational prison education program in 1996 when the facility was for women only. Although it’s a men’s prison now, the salon, and the esthetician program, remain in place. It’s a unique way of learning job skills in the…
Read MoreFlorence McClure Women’s Correctional Center Celebrates First Graduating Class
By Christopher Zoukis In 2017 a prison education pilot program was launched at the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in Las Vegas. In 2018, the Center celebrated its first graduating class. One graduate who did a speech at the ceremony said something very poignant about her new view of the world: “When I go out…
Read MoreWill Congress, Administration Let Inmate Pell Grants Expire This Year?
The Higher Education Act of 1965 created the Pell Grant program, designed to help low-income students afford college; an amendment to that law in 1972 explicitly made inmates eligible to apply for Pell grants, now the federal government’s largest educational assistance program for college students. But a provision added by Congress to a 1994 crime…
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