Prison Education News

Bard Prison Initiative

2013-06-19T15:34:01Z

By Kristina Hall

In 1860, Bard College, then known as St. Stephens' College, was founded. Overlooking the Hudson River in New York, the college’s function was to prepare young men for seminary, and over the years has evolved its curriculum into "higher intellectual and artistic goals." The very prestigious Bard College of today embraces science, arts, music, dance, film, and other liberal art disciplines.

The Institute of Writing & Thinking was born from visionaries within Bard College and, in 1999 many of the founders of this particular Institute formed the Bard Prison Initiative. Image courtesy wgss.artsci.wustl.edu

The Bard Prison Initiative was created so that incarcerated men and women could have the opportunity to earn a Bard College degree while serving their sentences. The curriculum and academic standards are as rigorous as Bard College, and the employment rate of prisoners released with Bard College degrees is quite high and recidivism is extremely low.

By early 2011, Bard College had granted 157 degrees to inmate participants who had participated in the Bard Prison Initiative and nearly 500 students have been enrolled in the educational program in five prisons across New York State.

The Bard Prison Initiative is the largest degree-granting, college-in-prison program in the country. Undergraduates from Bard College join Bard faculty members as volunteers in the prison program and offer classes that are related to these volunteer students' experiences with the Bard Prison Initiative.

Prison Education: Evolution

2013-06-18T14:29:07Z

By Christopher Zoukis

1789: Correctional Education Movement in the United States began with clergyman (Religious Society of Friends) William Rogers offering instruction to inmates at Philadelphia's Walnut Street Jail.

1816: Elizabeth Fry began teaching women inmates and their children to read in London's Newgate Gaol. This example later served as a model for American women prison reformers.

1820s: Rival penitentiary plans were put into effect: The Auburn ( New York ) Plan had inmates sleep alone but come together to work. The Pennsylvania Model kept prisoners in solitary confinement for the entire period of their incarceration. Image courtesy depositphotos.com

1820s & 1830s: American women concerned themselves with the plight of female prisoners during the Second Great Awakening, which popularized perfectionist theology, advocating the possibility of individual and social salvation.

1825: The first institution for juvenile delinquents, the New York House of Refuge, opened its doors. Prior to this, children were often housed with adults in prisons.

1826: Jared Curtis became the first chaplain of New York 's Auburn Prison. He gave 160 students in 31 classes Bible instruction.

FCI Petersburg Refuses to Stock Prison Education Reference Texts

2013-06-17T15:08:08Z

By Christopher Zoukis

I spent this morning consulting with a fellow prisoner -- a recent GED graduate -- at FCI Petersburg, a medium security federal prison in Petersburg, Virginia. The consultation concerned the man enrolling in a college correspondence program. The problem was that he had gone to the FCI Petersburg Education Department's leisure library looking for some type of book or resource guide on college correspondence programs for incarcerated students, but left empty handed. The only relevant text available was the second edition of the Prisoners' Guerrilla Handbook to Correspondence Programs in the U.S. and Canada by Jon Marc Taylor, Ph.D., a book published several years ago, which has since been updated and published again by Prison Legal News in 2009.* Image courtesy amazon.com

Luckily for my prospective student friend, I happen to be the author of the text Education Behind Bars: A Win-Win Strategy for Maximum Security (Sunbury Press, 2012). It's a prison education reference text that profiles various correspondence programs which inmates can enroll in. The problem is the FCI Petersburg Education Department will not stock a copy of this text. I've made a number of inquiries with the current FCI Petersburg Education Department Assistant Supervisor, but I never gain any traction. My Inmate-to-Staff emails are never answered -- and have never been since the email system was installed several years ago -- and I neither receive any approvals nor denials. Does this mean that higher education is dead at FCI Petersburg?

Since I'm now used to students needing the information contained in my book, information not made available to them by the FCI Petersburg Education Department staff, I always keep an extra copy of my text in my cell. The would-be student and I had a very productive morning. I explained to him about how the application process works, accreditation, the correspondence course modality, and we even settled upon a few schools which he was going to write to for more information (i.e., Upper Iowa University, Adams State College, and Ohio University). We ended our consultation with me writing out a sample letter which he could send to each school. As I walked away, he had pen in hand and was writing copies of the sample letter to send to each school.

Prison Braille Programs

2013-06-15T13:37:26Z

By Jean Trounstine

I can't say I'm nuts about Texas. Guns. Trucks. Giant Highways. Death Row. But there's a fascinating program in the Mountain View Women's Prison outside Temple,Texas, where more than 90 inmates take almost two years of training to work in the Braille translation facility and produce about 5,000 to 10,000 Braille pages per month. The Houston Chronicle reported this story in December. Braille was developed in the early 19th century by Louis Braille, who lost his eyesight to a childhood accident., and it begins with six-dot coded letters, words and punctuation. Photo courtesy corrections.com

In the picture to the right, a woman works with what is called, "digital tactile graphics," one of the skills that add to women becoming certified in Braille. Most of what they produce is for elementary and secondary students who are blind. In this 610 person prison, a woman could work in Braille– if she is accepted into the program — or she could train dogs for the handicapped in the kind of program I wrote about in an earlier post. But yep,she could also be sentenced to death.

Random you say, a program in braille in a prison? I agree that much of what is offered behind bars seems chosen because someone got an idea and ran with it. At Framingham, when I worked behind bars, the women had a bonsai tree program and they also made flags a la Betsy Ross.

What it Costs When We Don't Educate Inmates for Life After Prison

2013-06-14T18:00:11Z

By EMILY DERUY

Right now, taxpayers spend up to $70 billion each year to house the nation's two to three million prisoners. That works out to about $31,000 per inmate. One would think that with such a stiff price tag, we'd be doing a better job of rehabilitation. The truth is that the prison system still does a particularly questionable job of educating inmates for life after incarceration, with only about 6 percent of corrections spending used on education programs. And that matters more than the average person realizes. Image courtesy prisonlawblog.com

Currently, less than 15 percent of students in juvenile detention centers finish high school or complete a GED. Few prisons offer opportunities for adult inmates to pursue college degrees. That can make finding a job and reintegrating into society in a positive way much more difficult.

Stephen Steurer, executive director of the Correctional Education Association, said there are efforts at the state and national levels -- the U.S. Education Department has an Office of Correctional Education, for example -- to educate prisoners, but there isn't enough funding to back those initiatives up and there isn't much consistency from state to state. In fact, rehabilitation efforts by most states have hardly changed in 40 years.

One reason is that people in the United States react very differently to the idea of funding education in prisons than many people in Europe, particularly Scandinavia. And the current economy hasn't helped that.

Click to read more ...

(First published by ABC News/Univision)

PELL GRANTS FOR PRISONERS: Why Should We Care?

2013-06-13T15:03:01Z

By Jon Marc Taylor

They were code words. Employed in the opening salvos of the Reagan Revolution, the irresponsible "unwed mother", lazy "welfare queen", parasitic "drug dealer" and dangerous "gang-banger" were not-so-subtle euphemisms for the poor and people of color. The conservative movement’s concerted onslaught on the more inclusive entitlement and social safety net programs inspired by the New Deal era of government commenced, however, against the politically powerless and publicly vilified prisoner. Image courtesy splashlife.com

While the more overt War on Drugs with the attendant abolition of parole, mandatory minimum sentences, and expanded death penalty would take years to enact and for the crushing consequences to be felt, the initial forays against prisoners was fired by Virginia Congressman William Whitehurst in 1982, when he submitted legislation to rollback inmate Pell Grant disbursements. By 1991, senators and representatives from both parties (primarily from the old Confederacy) repeatedly introduced legislation to exclude "any individual who is incarcerated in any federal or state penal institution" from qualifying for Pell Grant assistance. For a decade, the various annual exclusion-fest amendments either did not make it out of their committees, or if passed on floor votes, were struck in the joint resolution committees.

The Prison Population in Colorado is Dropping. Can You Guess Why?

2013-06-12T14:30:43Z

By Dianne Frazee-Walker

Keith Humphreys, writer, researcher, and Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University nominates himself for reporting the most unreported public policy issue; the declining rate of Americans incarcerated or on probation.

Humphreys’ research theorizes that lead is a key factor associated with a decline in prison population over the past five years. His speculation is supported by a rise in lead emissions throughout the 60s and 70s resulting in a high crime rate during the 70s and 80s. Humphreys claims that even though crime rates went down in the early 90’s, incarceration rates were impacted by the remaining inmates serving long terms from the 60s and 70s while new inmates were being incarcerated. Image courtesy hayesvillelibrary.wordpress.org

Rick Nevin is a researcher who dug deeper into the lead theory. Nevin’s investigative studies reveal that young offender incarceration rates have decreased since the dawning of 2000. In the mean time older offenders were increasing and the incarceration rate remained high. The reasoning behind Nevin’s hypothesis is that the older offenders grew up during the time period when lead emissions were high and young offenders were not exposed to lead being raised in a more environmentally conscious era.

The Incarcerated Student's Guide To Enrolling In College From Prison

2013-06-11T13:19:58Z

By Christopher Zoukis

Enrolling in college from prison is no easy task. There is the lack of viable information to overcome. There is also the lack of accessible methods of communications to overcome, too. And, sadly, there is also the lack of informed college enrollment personnel to help the incarcerated student navigate the sometimes troublesome waters of enrollment in college from prison. But fear not: here is an easy-to-understand guide which presents the seven steps to enrolling in college from prison. Image courtesy contextpub.com

1) Locate a Resource Which Profiles College Correspondence Programs

There are currently three texts in the field of prison education reference which fulfill this need. The most popular is probably the Prisoners' Guerrilla Handbook to Correspondence Programs in the U.S. and Canada (3rd Edition) by Jon Marc Taylor, Ph.D. (Prison Legal News, 2009). Another title in this field is College in Prison by Bruce Michaels. "College in Prison" is a good text, but I feel Dr. Taylor's is probably the better of the two since it profiles many more correspondence programs and is better established. The final prison education reference text which profiles correspondence courses for prisoners is my own work, Education Behind Bars: A Win-Win Strategy for Maximum Security (Sunbury Press, 2012).

2) Verify the Accreditation Status of the College Correspondence Program

When perusing these prison education reference texts, the incarcerated student will find a number of fields contained within each correspondence program's profile. One of these fields deals with accreditation. Simply put, accreditation is the status of being approved by a body which ascertains the quality of an academic program. Hence, proper accreditation equates to not only a quality educational experience, but also dictates if other schools will accept credits gained at a particular school and if the degree awarded will be accepted by a professional body.

The gold standard of accreditation is accreditation by one of the six regional accreditation agencies which are approved by both the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). The six regional accreditation agencies are as follows:

Call for Manuscripts: PrisonEducation.com Launches Book Publishing Arm

2013-06-10T14:25:08Z

By Christopher Zoukis

It is with great pride that PrisonEducation.com announces its entry into the realm of book publishing. Middle Street Publishing, PrisonEducation.com's owner, is now entering the publishing industry with a focus on providing much-needed texts. Middle Street Publishing, a South Carolina non-profit dedicated to social justice, is interested in publishing books that are needed, but might not be commercial blockbusters. The point is to bring such books to the marketplace so that those who need them will have access to them. Image courtesy faboverfifty.com

The staff members of Middle Street Publishing are old hats when it comes to the book publishing industry. With over 10 published books to their staff's credit (their own books, not published by MSP), hundreds of book reviews, hundreds of articles, scores of texts edited, and a number of successful book promotional campaigns under their belts, this is a group of talented book creation, marketing, and promotion professionals who know what it takes to make a successful book and market it effectively. This group of experienced book industry professionals is now interested in publishing for the prison education and prison reform marketplaces.

The purpose behind the Middle Street Publishing/PrisonEducation.com book publishing venture is to find authors who have something important to say in the prison education and prison reform arenas and help them bring their work to the marketplace. Their publishing strategy is simple:

~Offer authors healthy contracts.

Correctional Budget Cuts and Potential Solutions

2013-06-08T14:44:32Z

By Christopher Zoukis

With fiscal uncertainty rampant and budget cuts looming state law makers are finally seeing the light when it comes to correction's budgets. This light comes in the numbers of 7% and $50 billion. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, states spend 7% of their discretionary budgets, $50 billion a year, on corrections. This is second only to health care and education. Michigan's Budget / Image courtesy huffingtonpost.com

States have taken these numbers to heart with extensive mid-year correctional budget cuts in 2011-2012. A total of 31 states made cuts to the tune of $805.9 million. Colorado led the pack with $112.5 million in cuts while South Dakota lagged behind with only $0.7 million in cuts. Surprisingly enough, California, with all of their fiscal issues, didn't make any cuts.

The move to reduce correction's budgets is focused on reducing both the number of prisoners incarcerated and the number of prisons. Texas, for example, is proposing a drastic shift in their correction's ideology. They were planning on building more prisons to compensate for probation revocations. But now they are considering lightening sentences for probation violations. Texas is basing this new correction's philosophy upon what others have called "shock probation." The idea is to overwhelm the probationer with the concept of how bad life can be if they were to go to prison. This is the same concept used by the scared straight programs. If Texas was to follow through with this proposal, costs would be around $241 million for the program, not the $540 million it would cost to build three new prisons, according to State House member Jerry Madden. Texas was one of the 31 states to make mid-year cuts. They cut $20 million from their correction's budget.