The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

The Correctional Association of New York, the state’s oldest criminal justice watchdog organization, released a report earlier this year that examines the benefits of in-prison college programs.

The report, “Education from the Inside Out,” includes a survey of earlier statistically based studies that show in-prison programs help significantly “in reducing recidivism and improving prison management.”

In 1991, the state Department of Correctional Services did an analysis in which the department tracked men and women who had earned a degree in the inmate college program during the 1986-87 academic year. This analysis found that the return rate for degree-earners to be significantly lower than that of participants who did not earn a degree.

“Of those earning a degree, 26.4 percent had been returned to the department’s custody, whereas 44.6 percent of the participants who did not earn a degree were returned to custody,” according to the state’s Analysis of Return Rates of the Inmate College Program Participants study.

The new report urges the state and federal government to reconsider allowing prison inmates to receive state and federal grants to obtain their degrees while behind bars.

made a difference

Teachers and administrators associated with Skidmore College’s inmate higher education program said the program, which ended in 1995, worked and was an uplifting experience for both the inmates and the teachers.

“The years right before they pulled the plug [on the in-prison programs], there was numerical data that showed clearly that providing a college education [to prison inmates] made a huge difference,” said Sandy Welter, now assistant director of Skidmore College’s master of arts in Liberal Studies program. Skidmore College is a private liberal arts college of 2,400 students in Saratoga Springs.

Welter, who taught in the University Without Walls program for 10 years and was administrator of the prison program for its last three years in existence, said it reduced recidivism and also improved the “quality of life inside the prison.”

She said the inmates at Great Meadow state prison in Comstock, Washington County, and at the Washington Correctional Facility nearby became prison “leaders, mentors and tutors.”

Bernice Mennis, who taught literature and composition classes in the University Without Walls prison program for 12 years, has written a new book about her experiences and the inmates’ experiences titled: “Breaking Out of Prison: A guide to consciousness, compassion and freedom,” self-published through iUniverse. “The success of the program was always obvious,” Mennis said.

She said half of the book features the writings of inmate students who were in her classes.

“Their writing shows you can teach people to think,” Mennis said. When the inmates learned how to think, they also learned how “we can be our larger selves, our better selves,” she said.

“I thought their words were so deeply thoughtful,” she said. “They moved me by their honesty and integrity.”

Mennis, who lives in the Adirondacks, taught for more than 20 years in the Vermont College of Union Institute & University.

funding issues

Erik Kriss, a spokesman for the state Department of Correctional Services, said state prison Commissioner Brian Fischer agrees with the Correctional Association of New York that state Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) money should be made available to state prison inmates. “Inmates who earn college degrees [while in prison] are more likely to be successful and not come back,” Kriss said.

However, he said the decision to allow prison inmates to receive state and federal grants for a college education behind bars is up to the state Legislature, the governor, and the U.S. Congress. “There is only so much we can do,” Kriss said.

College courses are offered at eight of the state’s dozens of prisons. All but one of these programs are privately funded.

Bard College in Dutchess County, for example, offers college-level courses in at least four state prisons through private funding, Kriss said. Cornell University expanded its privately funded college program from just Auburn state prison to the Cayuga state prison this past summer.

The only college-level program funded by state money is at the Wyoming state prison, not far from Attica state prison in western New York. The “Consortium of the Niagara Frontier” provides college courses at this medium-security prison through member item allocations from state legislators.

When Fischer was appointed state prison commissioner in 2007, he changed state prison policy allowing any inmate to take college courses, if available, rather than just those inmates with “merit time.”

Under the Gov. George Pataki administration, only inmates who had merited time off their sentences because of good behavior were allowed to take college-level courses, if available.

Robert Gangi, executive director of The Correctional Association of New York, said in 1994, President Bill Clinton signed an anti-crime bill that ended federal Pell Grants to prison inmates interested in taking college courses. Gov. Pataki, when he took office in 1994, ended the state TAP grants to inmates.

Gangi said the idea of returning these grants to prison inmates is support by the facts. “If it weren’t for the fiscal crisis, the odds would be in our favor,” Gangi said.

But Gangi said his association, which was founded in 1844 and brought about some of the first real prison reform in the state’s penal history, is working with leaders in the state Legislature.

fighting chance

“I think we have a fighting chance,” Gangi said about having TAP grants restored to prison inmates in the future. He said there is also discussion in Washington to restore Pell Grants to prison inmates.

“It leads to a better quality of life for the inmates and the communities,” Gangi said.

“The policy of most states and the federal government of locking up thousands of people each year, some for disproportionately long sentences, some for a second or third time, does little to reduce crime and often leads to hazardous conditions of confinement,” Gangi said in a prepared statement. “Our report points government leaders and concerned citizens in a different direction, making the case for the positive value of in-prison programs.”

The three recommendations in the Correctional Association report to New York policy makers include:

u Restore and expand public funding for college programs in prison primarily by lifting the ban on inmate eligibility for Tuition Assistance Program grants.

u Expand access to higher education opportunities for formerly incarcerated people as a means of supporting successful re-entry and community well-being.

u Require New York’s Board of Parole to consider participation in college programs as a qualifying indicator for parole release.

inmates’ view

“The UWW [University Without Walls] was a bright spot in an otherwise dark period,” wrote one student inmate to his teacher, Bernice Mennis. “Many a day has passed when I wanted to reach out and thank you for helping me learn how to release my feelings and express myself through the written word,” he wrote.

“Because of the class I have become a much better writer and person,” wrote another inmate to Mennis.

Both Mennis and Welter of Skidmore College say they still hear from their students from time to time, even though the Skidmore program ended nearly 15 years ago.

Ironically, Skidmore College’s University Without Walls program, a distance learning program that was created in 1971, may be phased out over the next two years. College officials say UWW enrollment is down and it is losing money. A final decision on the UWW is expected within the next six to eight months.
http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/mar/01/0301_prisoncoll/