Baltimore gets a bad rap for a lot that goes wrong in the city, but redemption is one of its favorite recurring themes. So it’s no surprise that the University of Baltimore is working at Jessup Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison near Baltimore, on improving prisoner education.
Specifically, the university is participating in a Department of Education pilot program intended to help prisoners pursue a higher education with federal grant money.
In June 2016, the university was chosen among 67 colleges and universities nationwide to participate in the Obama administration’s $30 million Second Chance Pell Grant Experimental Sites Initiative. Under the program, approximately 12,000 of America’s 2.2 million incarcerated will receive federal aid to pursue a higher education. Upon release, they will retain the Pell funding to finish their program.
Since the university’s Second Chance College Program began at Jessup this fall, its students have been working toward a bachelor’s degree in community studies and civic engagement with a minor in entrepreneurship. To be eligible, prisoners had to have been enrolled in Jessup’s preexisting Scholars Program, which offers noncredit liberal arts courses; had a high school diploma or GED; and submitted two letters of recommendation and one personal essay. Preference was given to those with a parole eligibility date within five years of the program’s start. Program directors sent letters to 150 men at Jessup with information on how to apply. Over 100 of those men submitted an application, and 29 are enrolled in the program today.
Federal aid for higher education of prisoners is not a new idea, but it’s most certainly controversial.
Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, those in prison were eligible to receive Pell Grant funding for college coursework. That changed with a provision in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which prohibited the incarcerated from receiving the funding. At the time, lawmakers argued that it was unjust to provide federal aid to those behind bars while many law-abiding citizens could not afford higher education.
Twenty years later, the administration’s program has resurrected similar debates. Many lawmakers are again concerned about providing Pell dollars for those in prison, as evidenced by the 2015 Kids Before Cons Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., and Rep. Tom Reed, R-Calif., which would ban the Department of Education from providing Pell Grants to prisoners. The bill was written, in part, in response to the Restoring Education and Learning Act of 2015 sponsored by Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md. which would lift the Pell Grant Ban from 1994.
If the numbers add up, however, investing in prisoner education could be a wise use of dollars.
One meta-analysis found that prisoners who participated in correctional education were 43 percent less likely to recidivate and 13 percent more likely to be employed upon release. It also found that every dollar invested in correctional education generates $5 in cost savings.
For those who do get an education while in prison, the results can be life-saving. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that about 68 percent of prisoners in state prisons do not have a high school education. Over half of those in prison can be characterized as functionally illiterate. This makes it all the harder to stay out of prison once convicts are released because not only do ex-felons have the stigma of conviction, making it harder to find housing and work, but they are unable to operate as most others do in society. On top of that, many of the released return back to communities that are overwhelmed by financial and education needs.
Jessup already conducts a GED program, though the graduation rate is small. With higher demand for continuing education after high school, this new program is a testament to whether the prison system can actually rehabilitate, not just punish criminals. With the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate in the world — nearly 600,000 men and women are released each year back into society — making them functioning members of society can be a positive step toward lowering that prison rate and helping communities where these ex-prisoners live.