In 1860, Bard College was founded, then known as St. Stephens’s College, overlooking the Hudson River in New York. The college began as a preparation for men to enter into seminaries, and over the years until the present time, have evolved their curriculum into “higher intellectual and artistic goals.” The very prestigious Bard College of today embraces science, arts, music, dance, film, and other liberal arts academia.
The Institute of Writing & Thinking was born from visionaries within Bard College, and in 1999, many of the founders of this particular Institute formed the Bard Prison Initiative.
The rate of post-release employment among the program’s participants is high and recidivism is stunningly low.
The Bard Prison Initiative was created so that incarcerated men & women could have the opportunity to earn a Bard College degree while serving their sentences. The curriculum and academic standards are as rigorous as Bard College, the employment rate of prisoners released with Bard College degrees is quite high, and recidivism is extremely low.
By early 2011, Bard College had granted 157 degrees to inmate students who had participated in the Bard Prison Initiative, and nearly 500 students have been enrolled in the educational program in five prisons across New York State.
The Bard Prison Initiative is the largest degree-granting college-in-prison program in the country. Undergraduates from Bard College join Bard faculty members as volunteers in the prison program and offer classes that are related to these volunteer students’ experiences with the Bard Prison Initiative.
With the help of a significant private grant, the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison was created to support other innovative college-in-prison programs throughout the country. Wesleyan University in Connecticut and Grinnell College in Iowa have now established programs, and the Consortium plans to establish programs in as many as ten more states within the next five years.
This initiative is one of many projects through Bard College that is hoping to illuminate the public on the importance of liberal arts in public life through prison education.
As former President Bill Clinton observed in his book Giving, the Bard Prison Initiative “is a good investment in a safer, more productive society.”
The Bard Prison Initiative has received national attention through the media, including a two-part series with PBS and a profile on CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Published Oct 15, 2011 by Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA | Last Updated by Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA on Jul 18, 2023 at 7:27 pm
