Board Member Editorial: Increasing Educational Opportunities for Incarcerated Persons

Abstract

Board Member Editorial:Increasing Educational Opportunities for Incarcerated Persons Heidi Coleman The United States has been grappling with mass incarceration for decades, and more intensely in the last few years as explicit and implicit police support of white supremacy and structural racism have become more visible. The United States (U.S.) has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with state prison populations often out-ranking entire countries (Prison Policy, 2021). And people of color are disproportionally represented in this population (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2022). Beckett and Francis (2020) argue that incarceration cannot be separated from racial politics in the U.S. I would argue that incarceration also cannot be separated from education, given that students of color have the lowest cohort graduation rates and highest high school dropout rates (NCES, 2020). The United States crafted the "American Dream" by holding dear to the myth that if you work hard, you can achieve anything—that meritocracy works. But it simply isn't true. Marginalized groups have been structurally and systematically shut out of opportunities, including education, and subsequently a living wage, since our earliest colonial times. Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous males have the highest high school dropout rates across the country (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). Of those who graduate, about 50% of Black students, 60% of Hispanic students, and 20% of Indigenous students go on to college compared with nearly 70% of white students (Education Data Initiative, 2021). Given that nearly three-quarters of all jobs require some sort of college credential, this creates an opportunity gap for employment which is compounded by the systemic racism of hiring practices. The result is the school-to-prison pipeline experienced in secondary education across the nation. When we fail to educate those most vulnerable in high school, we facilitate situations in which people have limited choices to support themselves and their loved ones. This pipeline helps explain a report from The Pew Charitable Trusts in 2010 which shows that the U.S. inmate population is higher than the top 35 European countries combined (Collateral Costs, 2010). And the incarceration rate for Black people is 5x higher, the rate for Latinx is 2x higher, and the Native American rate is 3x higher than White, non-Latinx Americans. Over 90% of currently incarcerated individuals will be released. Consider the opportunity gap now created for a marginalized person with a criminal record and no education (high school or college) when they are released from prison. Is it any wonder that nearly 80% of previously incarcerated people will be re-arrested within 9 years of release (BJS, 2018)? This is particularly concerning given the low number of college courses/programs offered in carceral environments. In a national survey of postsecondary education in state prisons, Gorgol and Sponsler (2011) found that only 35% of state prisons offered [End Page 87] college courses and that these programs serve only 6% of the total state prison population nation-wide. This is partly due to funding, but also partly due to structural barriers inside of prisons. Most facilities have few rooms dedicated to education. Gatekeeping actions like placement tests and time served also restrict participation. For example, a school that requires incarcerated students to have less than ten years and more than one year on their sentence to participate. This alone removes options for those who are serving long sentences. Another barrier is state law barring incarcerated students from earning a degree in some states. They can take courses, and may be able to get some level of certification, but cannot earn bachelor's degrees. And these barriers don't consider the interaction of individual bias and power originating from the administrators making decisions about who can participate. In 1994, President Clinton signed the Violent Crimes Act which prohibited incarcerated people from obtaining Pell Grants. Up until that time, higher education programs in prisons were gaining traction and finding that recidivism rates for those who participated in higher education programs in prison were 43% lower than those who did not. A recent study funded by the RAND corporation (Bozick, et al., 2018) found that education programs in prisons saved $5 for every dollar spent due to...