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How A New York Program is Reframing Prison Education

By Courtney Subramanian / NationSwell.com  Image courtesy wesleyan.edu

About two hours miles north of Manhattan, a group of young men meet weekly to debate philosophy and discuss composition. The curriculum is like any other liberal arts course, but the classroom is quite different from what most people experience.

These classes take place behind the confines of the Otisville Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in New York where many of its inmates are serving life sentences.

Otisville was the first to implement the Prison to College Pipeline (P2CP), a partnership between the City University of New York (CUNY) and the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS). Led by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Hostos Community College, the initiative selects inmates who have high school diplomas or GEDs and are eligible for release within five years to enroll as students through a process that includes assessment tests, submitting essays, and sitting down for an interview — much like the traditional college application process.

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Inmate Funded Educational Scholarship Kicks Off Dec. 5

By Carolyn Bucior

An inmate-funded scholarship will be jointly announced by the Milwaukee House of Correction, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, and Creative Corrections Education Foundation at an event Thursday, Dec. 5, 3-4 p.m. at the Milwaukee County House of Correction, 8885 S. 68th St., Franklin.  Image courtesy creativecorrections.org

Current inmates at the House of Correction have already pledged $400 per month to the scholarship, joining inmates in New Mexico and Texas. (That pledge amount will likely grow.) Their contributions will provide educational scholarships for children of inmates in Milwaukee County and surrounding areas.

The hope is obvious: for inmates’ children not to follow a life of crime. “We’re trying to break the cycle by supporting the education of prisoners’ children,” says Stan Stojkovic, dean of the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. According to the American Correctional Association, up to 50 percent of incarcerated juveniles have an incarcerated parent.

The scholarship fund is the brainchild of Boscobel, Wis., native Percy Pitzer, retired warden of Oxford Federal Prison and founder of the non-profit Creative Corrections Education Foundation. The foundation’s mission is to support equal opportunities for students whose parent or guardian is incarcerated or paroled and to stop second-generation crime.

A total of 31 $1,000-scholarships have been awarded thus far in 2013, and Pitzer anticipates awarding nine more by year’s end.

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Early Education Program Could Reduce Kansas Prison Costs

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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