From: https://www.usatoday.com

We should look to the humanities to help prisoners prepare for the business of living.

What reaction does the term “prison education” evoke?

For many, the immediate thought is vocational training with the goal of teaching inmates practical skills that theoretically provide connections to work in the “real world” after release. 

This fits perfectly with the American mindset about education and work generally: the only truly valuable education is one that connects the student directly to employment. Everything else is a luxury at best, or a waste of time and money at worst.

But for all the supposed realism and pragmatism of this view, for many behind bars, it may be the least practical and effective approach from the standpoint of supporting rehabilitation and reducing recidivism.

Comparatively few people have the actual gifts and interests necessary for success in skilled trades. Moreover, it is arguable that technical education doesn’t actually address the functional illiteracy (a lack of basic reading, writing and other communication skills) and socialization challenges including impaired “theory of mind” (the ability to empathize with other people in a positive and meaningful way) that help pave the way to crime and imprisonment.

The singular focus on technical education also fails to acknowledge that life in prison often reinforces and exacerbates early-life traumas and behavioral deficits that help create the cycle of anti-social behavior, criminal activity and incarceration.

Albert Einstein noted that “the value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.” All people can benefit from training their minds to think broadly and deeply about the world and their place in it, perhaps especially those who have committed crimes and been incarcerated.

While people must pay penalties for criminal activity, including spending time prison when necessary, we can also find ways of using education to redeem both the time and the person behind bars.

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Brent Orrell is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

From: https://www.politico.com

Dyjuan Tatro grew up in a poor neighborhood in Albany, N.Y., where gunshots were common and education inaccessible. Around 10th grade, Dyjuan dropped out and was selling drugs. A few years later, when he was 20, he was involved in a shooting and sentenced to prison for assault.

Thankfully, that was just the first chapter of Dyjuan’s story. While incarcerated, Dyjuan was able to access the education he had missed as a teenager. He was accepted to the Bard Prison Initiative’s postsecondary education program, where he joined BPI’s debate team — which drew national attention after defeating Harvard University. By the time Dyjuan got out of prison, he had finished a mathematics major and earned a bachelor’s degree from Bard College. Today, he works as a government affairs and advancement officer for BPI.

In America, individuals released from prison often return to crime. One study published in 2018, which analyzed data from 23 states, found that 37 percent of those released in 2012 returned to prison within three years. Of those released in 2010, 46 percent returned to prison within five years.

But the recidivism rate is far lower for prisoners who are able to get some postsecondary education while in prison. Fewer than 3 percent of graduates of BPI, which is based in New York, return to prison. In contrast, well over 30 percent of individuals released from the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision return to custody within just three years. Other colleges with similar postsecondary education programs for prisoners also boast lower recidivism statistics than their state averages.

Providing education to the incarcerated is a win-win — it reduces future crime rates and saves public funds that otherwise would be spent keeping people in jail or prison.

Unfortunately, however, Dyjuan’s ability to access a postsecondary education while incarcerated is far from typical. The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act rendered anyone behind bars ineligible to receive federal Pell Grants. These grants, which give impoverished students financial aid for postsecondary education, had long been a critical funding mechanism for in-prison college programs. The Pell Grant ban put a virtual end to postsecondary education for prisoners who weren’t able to take advantage of privately funded programs like Bard’s or who didn’t have greater familial financial support.

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By EMILY MOONEY