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Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C. | Federal Criminal Defense Lawyers & Prison Consultants

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North Carolina's Innovative Program for Prisoners

Oct 16, 2013 No Comments

The North Carolina Department of Correction works with UNC-Chapel Hill’s Friday Center for Continuing Education to provide a variety of tuition-free university courses and educational services to inmates. Only those incarcerated in the North Carolina prison system qualify for the Correctional Education Program.

Since 1974, 167 participants in Correctional Education’s on-campus study-release program have earned college degrees, including three doctorates and eighteen master of arts or master of science degrees. Many have gone on to thrive in professional jobs. The recidivism rate of study-release participants is only 7 percent.  Image courtesy twitter.com

Who is Eligible?

Incarcerated individuals must meet academic and sentence criteria for eligibility. The academic criteria are a GED score of at least 250, a WRAT reading grade level of at least 10.0, or prior college (or community college) academic credits. The sentence criteria exclude all Class A and Class B felons, as well as other adult offenders whose parole eligibility and discharge dates are more than 10 years in the future. The 18- to 25-year-old individuals funded by Federal Youth Offender Act grants must be within five years of parole eligibility or discharge date.

The Procedure

Qualified inmates should contact a Programs or Education staff member, preferably their case worker, at their correctional facility

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Reversing the School-to-Prison Pipeline, Building College Pathways From Rikers Island

Oct 11, 2013 No Comments

By Aviva Teva and Ray Tebout – Huffington Post
We know from data and personal experience that expanding college access and supports is a cost-effective recidivism reduction and public safety strategy that will foster the transformation of entire communities. In August, the RAND Corporation published a meta-analysis of 30 years of research on correctional education in the U.S., showing that inmates who participate in education programs are 43% less likely to recidivate than inmates who do not and post-release employment was 13% higher for those who had participated in education while incarcerated. Education opportunities and supports in criminal justice and reentry settings, often known as “reentry education,” and postsecondary reentry education in particular is a powerful poverty reduction and justice reinvestment approach that addresses historic injustices within both the criminal justice and education systems. The New York Reentry Education Network (NYREN) is a network of community-based reentry service providers that partner with government agencies and academic institutions in New York City to center education in reentry and mobilize for systems change, including expanding college access to individuals involved in the criminal justice system.

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Bible College Helps Some at Louisiana Prison Find Peace

Oct 10, 2013 No Comments

By Erik Eckholm – The New York Times ANGOLA, La. — Like most of his fellow inmates, Daryl Walters, 45, can expect to spend the rest of his days in the infamous prison on a former slave plantation here. He was sentenced to life without parole for a murder more than 20 years ago in a

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CA School And Prison Funding Demand Review, Advocates Say

Oct 9, 2013 No Comments

By Olivia Niland As California Gov. Jerry Brown continues to emphasize a commitment to shrinking state prison populations and reinvesting in California’s flagging K-12 public school system, advocates on both sides of the issue are calling for a reevaluation of the state’s funding priorities. Despite its dwindling prison population, the state’s correctional system budget has

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A Lesson My Cellmate Taught Me: Standing for Principles

Oct 2, 2013 No Comments

The other day my cellmate presented a situation for my review. He explained that a particular person I regularly sat with in our housing unit’s day room had a bad reputation for some of his political and social beliefs. While I challenged his opinion on the matter, I realized that he was right after taking

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Early Education Program Could Reduce Kansas Prison Costs

Sep 25, 2013 No Comments

By The Associated Press KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Wyandotte County law enforcement officials have endorsed a plan that calls for investing in early childhood education as a way to cut down on crime and prison costs. Sheriff Don Ash, District Attorney Jerry Gorman, and jail administrator Jeffrey Fewell endorsed a proposal from the Obama administration

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Full Circle Restorative Justice – Part 1

Sep 24, 2013 No Comments

By Dianne Frazee-Walker

Dianne Walker still recalls the moment she had a revelation about taking action with the criminal justice system. August 13, 2004, Walker concluded a four month ordeal dealing with a false allegation against her. Prior to the incident Walker owned and operated a nail salon in Salida, Colorado. She had no knowledge of how the justice system operates and had never been arrested.  Dianne Frazee-Walker / Image courtesy plus.google.com

Walker’s eyes were open to what actually happens when an individual is accused of a crime. A plea-bargain was made, Walker was sentenced to two-years probation after coming extremely close to spending time in jail. She was rushed out of the court room and that was that.

The baffling veracity of the criminal justice system became clear to Walker. The truth is not a priority nor are the victim and offender encouraged to interact with each other. The main objective is to ensure the offender is punished and pays by either probation fees or incarceration time.   

Walker was bewildered with the entire process and knew she could not merely walk away after experiencing the reality of what goes on within the justice system. In Walker’s mind, the day she gazed at the court document stating her decree, marked the beginning of a life-long quest to advocate for a more authentic way to process cases through the justice system.

Full Circle Restorative Justice was founded in 2006 for the purpose of enhancing the safety of the community by holding offenders accountable, and empowering victims through a supportive conflict resolution process.

The legal system asks: What laws have been broken? Who did it? What do they deserve?

Restorative Justice asks: Who has been hurt? What are their needs? Whose obligations are these? 

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Call for Information on Correspondence Educational Programs

Sep 23, 2013 No Comments

Prison Education News, Prison Law Blog’s sister website, is in the process of updating a text which profiles various correspondence education programs that prisoners can enroll in. The text — “Education Behind Bars,” which I authored — has been substantially revised and will be published in a different form in 2014 by Middle Street Publishing.

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Editorial: Negative Attitude Towards Prisoners Hurts Rehabilitation Efforts

Sep 18, 2013 No Comments

By the Editorial Board of The Daily Campus

Recently, Eric Bolling of “The Five,” a Fox News program, was under well-deserved attack by the illustrious Stephen Colbert for the former’s comments regarding the suicide of Ariel Castro, convicted for 937 criminal charges among which included rape, kidnapping, and aggravated murder. While this article isn’t quite a defense of Castro, it is an attack on Bolling’s statements which posited that taxpayers saved $780,000 by his suicide. Bolling’s argument here is insensitive, even when one considers the magnitude of Castro’s crimes, and is indicative of the negative attitude towards criminals and their opportunity for reform. America wholly believes once a criminal always a criminal, and this social stigma prevents them from re-entering society successfully.  Image courtesy twitter.com

With this in mind, it’s clear why recidivism, or the term to describe former felons re-entering prisons or re-arrested for similar previously committed crimes, is so high in this country and why rehabilitation programs struggle to take effect. When one in thirty-two Americans is on probation, parole or in prison and America has that largest population of criminals (you know, that popular statistic, 5 percent of the global population, 25 percent of its prisoners), one would think that the public attitude towards criminals would be more supportive. Instead, America has collectively decided to abandon these people with the idea that they are a lost cause and deserve the barest of dregs we can throw at them, leaving them to struggle both in and out of the prison system.

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