and Augie Torres, Undergraduate Student, Governors State University & Alumni, Education Justice Project: augie.m.torres@gmail.com
Last month there was a debate contest, and you have probably
heard about it by now. A debate team comprised of students who are incarcerated
at Eastern New York Correctional
Facility (ENYC), a maximum security prison, beat Harvard’s undergraduate debate
team. The students who are incarcerated attend classes through the Bard Prison
Initiative, a postsecondary education program run by Bard College. Both teams
have impressive records: the Harvard debate team earned national championship
status in 2014 and the incarcerated debate team has victories against the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point and the University of Vermont. NBC’s headline
describing the win for students incarcerated at ENYC Facility – and the loss of
students at Harvard – reflects a common tone among popular headlines after the
event: Harvard’s Prestigious Debate Team Loses to a Group of Inmates. For
the most part, the headlines were disappointing. There appears to be a certain
sensationalism associated with “inmates” beating ivy-league students, but there
shouldn’t be.
The win for imprisoned students at ENYC is not surprising for
those of us who teach inside prisons and work with students who are
incarcerated, have family members and friends who are incarcerated, have a keen
understanding of how mass incarceration works, or have been incarcerated
ourselves. To be surprised, one must rely upon dangerous raced and classed assumptions
about both individuals who are incarcerated and those who attend Harvard. We
don’t often hear about the educational, intellectual, and academic work being
done inside prisons across the United States and so perhaps a bit of amazement
is warranted. It is our hope, however, that for those of us involved in higher
education, the feeling of astonishment at the ability of individuals who are
incarcerated to intellectually outperform students at one of the most
recognized institutions of higher education becomes less of a spectacle and
more commonplace. The current emphasis on college-in-prison programming on
behalf of the Department of Education makes us optimistic.
On Thursday, September 17, the Department of Education
hosted an informational webinar open to anyone who was interested titled The Second Chance Pell: Pell for Students Who Are
Incarcerated. The webinar follows
up on the Federal Register notice released by the U.S. Department of Education
on August 3, 2015 inviting higher educational institutions to apply to
participate in the new initiative under the (ESI), which tests the
effectiveness of statutory and regulatory flexibility for higher educational
institutions that disburse Federal student aid. The webinar provided educators
with information about the Second Chance Pell,
a new institutionally-based initiative. The initiative provides an opportunity
for participating institutions of higher education, in partnership with one or more
Federal or State penal institutions, to provide Federal Pell Grant funding to
otherwise eligible students who are incarcerated. As many readers of this blog
know, the Higher Education Act stipulates that students who are incarcerated in
Federal or State penal institutions are ineligible to receive funding through
the Federal Pell Grant program. The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act eliminated Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated individuals
and as a direct result, the overwhelming majority of college-in-prison programs
closed due to lack of funding. The steady
withdrawal of higher education programs from U.S. prisons has effectively
severed access to educational opportunity for incarcerated individuals and
severely limited future educational access as formerly incarcerated individuals
find themselves without the educational credentials to successfully pursue
postsecondary opportunities upon release.
The initiative is good news. According
to the webinar, it aims to do the following:
- Examine how weighting the restrictions on providing Pell grants to individuals in Federal or State penal institutions influences participation in educational opportunities, and academic and life outcomes;
- Examine whether the waiver creates any challenges or obstacles with an institution’s administration of the Title IV HEA programs. The DOE is interested in determining how disbursement of federal Pell grant funds affects incarcerated students and;
- Allow participating institutions to provide federal Pell grant funding to otherwise eligible students who are incarcerated in federal or state penal institutions and who are eligible for release into the community.
There are a number of requirements that schools must meet in
order to be eligible for the program, including providing academic and career
services as well as transition guidance to support successful reentry.
Potential students must meet specific criteria, too. Preference is to be given
to potential students who are eligible for release back into the community,
with emphasis on individuals who are scheduled be released in the next five
years. The initiative does not weight certain restriction criteria and it does
not waive costs of attendance. It is worth reading the specifics and a
transcript of the webinar is available here.
The informational webinar was the first in a series
sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to encourage institutions of
higher education to partner with State and Federal prisons to provide access to
postsecondary education. The initiative is not perfect; for example, both of us
would like to see greater emphasis on individuals who are not eligible for
release in the next five years and we have a number of questions regarding what
constitutes education in this
context. Yet, reinstating Pell grant eligibility for incarcerated students is a
necessary first step to increasing access and one that we hope invigorates
conversations about what postsecondary educational opportunity in prisons
should look like during our era of mass incarceration.
We urge the higher education community to learn more about
postsecondary education efforts in prison contexts. There are a variety of ways
to learn and we only touch upon a few here. Find out if your local or regional
prison provides educational opportunities for incarcerated people by talking
with the Department of Corrections. If they exist, see if you can support
already established efforts by donating time, resources, and/or desperately
needed funding. Ask if your own institution is involved in providing or
supporting classes for incarcerated people. Listen to what directors of college-in-prison
programs across the nation need and learn more about the long history of
postsecondary education provision in prisons. Begin conversations with
non-incarcerated individuals on your own respective campuses about the Prison
Industrial Complex, mass imprisonment, and the contemporary carceral state.
Find out if prior criminal history is considered in your institution’s
admissions criteria. Importantly, if you have never been to a prison, go. Call
and make an appointment and ask for a ‘tour’ (this, inappropriately, is the
dominant language – at least in the state of Utah). For an institution so
integral to the political and economic fabric of the U.S., we urge you to go
see what you are paying for. Prisons are institutions in which we all invest
and in at least 11 states, we spend more on imprisonment than higher education. It is outrageous.
The National Conference on Higher Education is Prison is
held annually and this year it will take place in Pittsburgh, PA November 6-8
(an unfortunate date for many of us AHSE-goers, but there is no conflict next
year!). The conference attracts educators, volunteers, activists, formerly
incarcerated and felony disenfranchised individuals, and others interested in
and committed to prison education. Last year’s conference was held at Danville Correctional Center in Danville, Illinois. Andra
Slater, who was released late last year, presented a paper as part of a panel
on critical approaches to education in prison titled, The Underestimation of
Carceral Intellect: Problematizing the ‘Wow’ Factor Among Prison Educators. Andra later published his paper as part of a larger multi-author manuscript examining the purposes of higher education in prison during mass incarceration. You can read the manuscript here: http://ecommons.luc.edu/jcshesa/vol1/iss1/2/. We
encourage all people to watch Andra discuss the seemingly innocent element of
surprise at the intellectual capabilities of individuals who are incarcerated,
particularly those who find it challenging to believe that ENYC’s debate team
beat Harvard’s.
Providing access to high quality postsecondary education for
incarcerated students through the reinstatement of Pell grant eligibility is
one important element of much-needed criminal justice reform. The Second Chance
Pell initiative is welcomed within a larger context that Marie Gottschalk
makes so clear: individuals can’t be given a second chance if they were never
afforded a first. The DOE’s initiative can partially help to bridge this gap
and so too can institutions of higher education. All of us have a
responsibility to ensure that incarcerated individuals have access to high
quality postsecondary educational opportunities during and after incarceration.
For those of us involved in higher education, we can do this by supporting
already established efforts, learning more about the extensive history of
prison education, beginning conversations on our respective campuses, and
listening to and learning from students like Andra. We can only be surprised if
we are not seeing incarcerated people as potential postsecondary students and
degree completers. As David Register, Director of Debate for the Bard Prison
Initiative, describes:
“It is critically important to
remember that our debaters are students first and debaters second – and
prisoners a distant third.”
Let’s work to ensure that
incarcerated individuals are given the opportunity to become college students.
