For Some Inmates, Rehabilitation Includes A College Degree

By Lauren Rearick


On Wednesday, May 22, 10 inmates at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, a state prison for gentlemen, became the opening graduates of the Washington University Prison Education Project.


Introduced earlier this year, the project supplied inmates of the Missouri-based Correctional Center with the chance to study college-level courses, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Courses in the spring semester included Chinese Civilization, Introduction to Macroeconomics, and Greek Mythology. Sort in attempt to receive a diploma, students had to carry out 60 hours of credits.


Robert Henke, a professor and director of program instructed them Post-Dispatch about the individual nature of the offerings: “We’ve created this liberal arts environment in the middle of a prison,” he mentioned. “You get your books and it’s Homer’s Odyssey so you begin talking about the text. You’re the professor and they’re not criminals, they’re not inmates, they’re college students.”


Thanks to funding from Washington University, classes are proposed free of charge to interested inmates. Categorize in attempt to enroll, potential students must write a personalized essay, take a test, and have a high school diploma or a degree equivalent. (A recent survey found that 30 percent of incarcerated adults had not completed a high school education; the school-to-prison pipeline contributes to these numbers.) The Post-Dispatch reports that 30 interested students will take part in the program’s summer session. Staff of the prison are also welcome to take the classes.


Graduating student Kareem Martin instructed them Post-Dispatch that enrolling had “awakened something in me that needed to be awakened.” His classmate and one of the day’s graduation speakers, Danien Cobb, mentioned that due to the program, he is “freed to dream.” Cobb shared his post-graduation plans with the Post-Dispatch, detailing a future that incorporates a finalization of his associate’s degree.


The Washington University Prison Education Project is one of 11 participating colleges in the Bard Prison Initiative. By way of the program, Bard College in New York City partners with universities and prisons while in the United States to distribute “rigorous” courses to incarcerated people.


Such work is segment of a growing trend of prison education programs aimed to help incarcerated people better prepare themselves for the future. Higher educational institutions in locations across the country — including New York, Connecticut, and Maryland — are among those partnering with prisons group in attempt to supply “life-changing” educational possibilities for inmates.


In a 2019 report from the Vera Institute of Justice, it was noticed that inmates who enroll in a college program are more likely to find future employment upon finalization of a prison sentence. Nevertheless, as noted by NPR, a ban on issuing federal Pell Grants to inmates was enacted in 1994. Pell Grants issue financial assistance for income-eligible students, although due to the ban, an estimated 463,000 inmates are unable to afford college-level classes that could be obtainable to them while in their time in prison.


The Vera Institute of Justice and the Georgetown Law School’s Center on Poverty and Inequality estimated that if the ban on offering Pell Grants to incarcerated inmates was lifted, employment rates among formerly-incarcerated people would increase by 10 percent.


Congress is now considering a bill that would possibly reverse this ban on allocating Pell Grants to inmates, NPR reports.