As incarceration rates among women increase, the College and Community Fellowship (CCF) of New York has determined to respond with gender-based programming that helps provide access to higher education for women. CCF’s programs and partners also help women released from prison find housing and other services they need in order to help them find success
By Christopher Zoukis
The New York-based Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) is one of the largest prison-based higher education programs of its kind. While serving their prison sentences, participants study rigorous coursework and work toward earning college degrees. The program offers access to higher education to both incarcerated men and women who want to pursue their education and increase their chances of finding a good job and enjoying a more rewarding life upon their release. In this way, the program’s mission is to employ education as a vehicle for change—changing people’s futures and the criminal justice system itself. Image courtesy www.jjay.cuny.edu
Introduction to the Bard College Prison Program
According to the program’s website, the initiative “enrolls incarcerated women and men in academic programs that lead to degrees from Bard College” (bpi.bard.edu/faqs/). Courses are instructed by faculty from Bard College as well as other area colleges at five participating prisons. Participants work to earn Associate of Arts or Bachelor of Arts degrees. The program offers classes in the arts, humanities, mathematics, and sciences and offers general education coursework that fulfills degree requirements. An important feature of the program is that coursework is not altered for the prison population. “Incarcerated students are held to identical academic standards as conventional undergraduates at Bard College. The substance of the courses is not tailored to the incarcerated students and is the same as offered on the main Bard campus.” In this way, incarcerated students receive the same education as if they attended classes outside of prison.
A common opinion in American society is that prisoners don’t deserve help. They are the ones that put themselves in prison to begin with.
Most citizens are not aware that when prisoners are released into society it is our responsibility to care. The outside population is affected by offenders that are released from prison without essential life skills. Community members and tax-payers are impacted by prisoners that are unable to survive in the outside world because the only way these individuals know how to earn a living is to commit crimes. Image courtesy prisonsociety.org
The Pennsylvania Prison Society (PPS) has been educating former offenders to become productive citizens and advocating for safe communities since 1787. The organization continues to add new programs that make it possible for former offenders to successfully reintegrate back into society.
Most inmates are accustomed to a family environment filled with stress and trauma. Enduring prison life is no different.
PPS reduces the recidivism tipping point by offering new workshops for former inmates that promote coping skills and innovative approaches to living a fulfilling life in the real world.
Phillips State Prison has fostered various academic programs that lead to a general education diploma. Historically, this prison’s programs have included remedial literacy, special education, and basic adult education. It has recently moved beyond the high school education arena, however, to provide college-level courses. Located in Buford, Georgia, Phillips State Prison is the site of
They were code words. Employed in the opening salvos of the Reagan Revolution, the irresponsible “unwed mother”, lazy “welfare queen”, parasitic “drug dealer” and dangerous “gang-banger” were not-so-subtle euphemisms for the poor and people of color. The conservative movement’s concerted onslaught on the more inclusive entitlement and social safety net programs inspired by the New Deal era of government commenced, however, against the politically powerless and publicly vilified prisoner. Image courtesy splashlife.com
While the more overt War on Drugs with the attendant abolition of parole, mandatory minimum sentences, and expanded death penalty would take years to enact and for the crushing consequences to be felt, the initial forays against prisoners was fired by Virginia Congressman William Whitehurst in 1982, when he submitted legislation to rollback inmate Pell Grant disbursements. By 1991, senators and representatives from both parties (primarily from the old Confederacy) repeatedly introduced legislation to exclude “any individual who is incarcerated in any federal or state penal institution” from qualifying for Pell Grant assistance. For a decade, the various annual exclusion-fest amendments either did not make it out of their committees, or if passed on floor votes, were struck in the joint resolution committees.
By William R. Piper
To begin, environmental survival concerns the ability of the prisoner to sustain his well-being given the rigors of prevailing prison conditions. Imprisonment entails a form of secondary socialization in which prisoners have to adapt to prison as a way of life. Old modes of living are shattered and they have to adjust themselves to the deprivations of prisons. They might do this in a number of ways. The range of such adjustment entails the pain of imprisonment in which prisoners must come to grips with a new reality, a new concrete situation in which the events in the prison setting fail to corroborate their prior social experiences.
Prison conditions constitute the concrete situation in which prisoners find themselves and in which they must not only survive, but must transform and from which they struggle to free themselves. Although constituting the prisoners concrete situation, prison conditions should not be perceived as hopeless or unalterable, but merely as limiting and therefore challenging. Image courtesy www.humanicabooks.com
I have been incarcerated since 1992, and during my imprisonment as a result of an unlawful arrest and conviction, I have witnessed the need for continuing education, along with other programs equipped to provide a means of positive change.
It cannot be disputed that providing education begins a process of enabling and motivation. It motivates the person to look at themselves and seek change; and it enables a person not only to gain information but to open their minds and spirits to more objective and positive views of the world and their own ability to establish a place for themselves in the world.
Education enables a person in prison to see the potential for change and the possibility of a new life. Indeed, it allows the person to think more responsibly and, in thinking more responsibly, the person’s attitudes and values are called into question.
When attitudes and values are objectively looked at, the full range of social and community obligations begin to take root in that person’s mindset. This in turn creates “positive” changes in one’s behavior.
It can furthermore be argued that education inspires a person to develop those essential human qualities that are necessary to all social and community relationships. With education men and women can return to their communities from prison, bringing the spirit of positive change. Without it, they bring only the worst of the experiences encountered as a result of their exposure to imprisonment and the Criminal Justice System’s practice of warehousing a particular class of people.
With the United States criminal justice system facing extraordinary challenges, including crowded jails, busy courtrooms, state budget pressures, and high recidivism rates, criticism continues to mount. However, few solutions seem to gain traction. Prisons are seen today as a place of retribution for crimes committed instead of an opportunity to rehabilitate prisoners and prepare them
Michael Herron, a 31 year old former prison inmate and drug peddler is now peddling his way to work in San Diego, California.
This is made possible by Pedal Project, a program that donates refurbished bikes to ex-offenders as a means of transportation. Before Herron had a bike he was taking the bus or bumming rides from friends because he couldn’t afford a car or a $72 monthly bus pass.
Several ex-cons and people who help former prisoners re-enter society related that not having reliable transportation makes it difficult for ex-offenders to have a way to gPhoto courtesy businessinsider.comet to job interviews and workplaces.
When Steve Shia, a retired corrections officer and teacher commuted to Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, he experienced a need prisoners have when they are released. Shia taught secondary education and helped young offenders prepare for college at the San Diego-based correctional facility. His commute required him to bicycle from the border trolley to his job. Shia also noticed that his car repair expenses were cutting into his salary. The situation made him aware that when prisoners are released from prison they usually don’t’ own a vehicle to dependably get them to work or even provide transpiration to look for a job. Shia was motivated to create a solution for released inmates to have a means of transportation when they enter the work force.
Susan Trieschmann, a northwest Chicago café owner took a big leap of faith when she renovated her for-profit business into a non-profit reentry program for young adult ex-offenders. The second chance café is an experimental restorative justice restaurant. Initially the neighbors were skeptical about offenders pouring their morning coffee. But it only took the community three weeks to trust the stigmatized employees to serve them the blue plate specials. Today you will find customers on Central Street lined up at the counter during the noon hour waiting for lunch to be served by the transformed ex-offenders. Curt’s Cafe / Photo courtesy ecowren.net
Curt’s Café is a solo act in a city that only provides reentry programs for juvenile offenders. Chicago has hundreds of coffee shops, but only one restorative justice café that gives ex-offenders a second chance. The innovative reentry program requires the employees to form a restorative circle at the end of each eight hour shift to check on each other’s personal development and work skill progress.
Trieschmann’s idea for her restorative restaurant originated from a passion to help offenders reenter the workforce with employable skills. She emotionally explains that she doesn’t think it is fair how difficult it is for ex-offenders to become productive citizens when they re-enter the working world with a criminal record lingering in their past.
When the employees first started working at the café they barely knew how to make a cup of coffee and had difficulty making it to work on time. The ex-offenders have come a long way since they first began working at the café. They had many challenges to overcome, but persistence has paid off.
We have profiled every prison within the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Learn about each prison’s location, security level, educational and recreational offerings, and much more.
Elizabeth Franklin-Best P.C.
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Mount Pleasant, SC 29464
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