Having spent 16 years behind bars, Dirk Van Velzen is used to the word “no”; however, he may have heard that word more than the average prisoner. Van Velzen went to prison in 1999 on commercial burglary charges and got bored. According to his story on Prison Scholar Fund, “he quickly realized that the main
Congress passed the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) in 1984, aiming to bring longer sentences to violent career criminals. Under ACCA, federal defendants facing firearms possession charges can get much longer sentences if they have previously been convicted of three or more violent felonies or serious drug crimes. The 10-year maximum sentence for being a
Federal Correctional Institution Mendota, located near Fresno, California, houses about 800 inmates. Opened in 2012, the medium-security male prison in California with an adjacent minimum-security camp has recently been the focus of numerous investigations into whether conditions there pose serious dangers to the health of inmates and staff. According to published reports, complaints about temperature
More and more people are learning that prison education programs are instrumental in reducing crime and cutting down recidivism. Educating prisoners (both in and out of prisons, which ultimately leads to lower incarceration rates) costs less than housing offenders in the federal prison system, making education a key tax-reduction strategy. However, the benefits of prison
Shortly before 10:00 a.m. on September 7, 16 single-occupancy cells in a restrictive housing section of Nebraska’s top-security prison, the Tecumseh State Correctional Institute, unexpectedly opened. The cause of this irregularity was not specific, but a computer error in the system that controls the cellblock doors was suspected. The restrictive housing unit is home to
The Prison Entrepreneur Program (PEP), a Texas-based non-profit formed in 2004, assists inmates convicted of felonies to prepare for life after prison by developing skills and character, finding post-release employment, and eventually making a success with their businesses. The group’s current CEO, Bryan Kelley, is a program graduate. Nearly finished serving a 20-year sentence for
The Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) provides college degree courses for persons in upstate New York prisons. Believing that “any person can find instruction in any study,” the leaders of CPEP see this education as a fundamental part of any successful re-entry program. CPEP was launched after an act of Congress, and the resulting legislation
In 1994, as part of the Clinton-era tough-on-crime Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, Congress stripped from the Higher Education Act of 1956 (HEA) prisoners’ eligibility for federal Pell grants for lower-income students. But in July 2015, the Obama Department of Education (DOE) created a pilot Second Chance program under a different HEA section to
“I made a mistake when I was 17 years old, and I recognize that someone lost their life. I didn’t pull the trigger, but I was there. There’s no snapping my finger and getting them to come back. I know what death means.” That was Edward Sanders’s powerful statement during a recent lecture at the
On September 7, Michigan announced it would stop requiring applicants for most occupational and construction code licenses to check a box on the application form disclosing whether they have ever been convicted of a felony. Governor Rick Snyder (R) announced the policy change by the state’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA). Snyder also