When looking at recidivism rates (the national average is 75 percent), the answer to this gruesome statistic is education. But while most prisoners do not have enough money for education, it becomes time for prisons to step up and find the means to educate their prisoners. These sky-high recidivism rates burden taxpayers, and the money
On December 8, 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) released new guidelines, coined a “Correctional Education Guidance Package,” designed to enhance educational programming in juvenile detention centers. These guidelines have the potential to help many of the 60,000 juvenile prisoners who are currently in custody. The state
By Jonathan Stith There is a war going on outside — that no Black youth is safe from. Most recently, we’ve seen this war played out through the extrajudicial killings of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and other victims of state-sanctioned violence. But we also know it through the devastation of mass incarceration under
By Dianne Frazee-Walker The Yavapai Reentry Project, established in 2011, fulfills a critical need within the state prison system and the Prescott, Arizona, area. The main objective of the program is to empower newly released inmates and create a safe environment for the communities they re-enter. The goal of human service non-profit organizations, government agencies,
By Justin Lewis Donohue There are a million clichés that come with graduation. Sayings that have been carried over the years through songs, cards, poems, and speeches. Every year, one or more people will stand before a graduating class and dispense upon them a set of words that, although they are meant to be advice,
By Jane Lindholm, Ric Cengeri & Amanda Shepard In his budget address last month, Gov. Peter Shumlin announced that he plans to cut almost $2 million of funding from the Community High School of Vermont, a program that provides high school classes to those in Vermont’s prison system. There are 17 campuses in Vermont, according
This past Saturday, 53 inmates at Eastern Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, were awarded college diplomas as part of the Bard Prison Initiative, a program that enables convicted felons to take courses and earn degrees while incarcerated. Among the graduates were newly minted experts in advanced math, literature, and social studies
By Zeeshan Aleem / Policy.Mic Hardly a day goes by without a member of the media or policy world pronouncing that America’s education system is in dire straits. There are constant laments over how poorly the U.S. fares by international standards, its failure to produce literate students, and its unsightly levels of racial segregation. There’s a massive
By Dianne Frazee-Walker American prisoners and wild mustangs roaming the Arizona desert have a lot in common. The most obvious mutual denominator inmates and these untamed beasts share is there are too many of them. There are about five prison programs in the U.S. that bring prisoners and horses together to tame each other and
By Gloria Romero and Rishawn Biddle / Sacramento Bee As the nation focuses on the state of the union and how we make ourselves a better nation, one fact is inexplicably never addressed: If we are to get people back to work, we need to have not only jobs available but trained workers available to