Education From the Inside Out: A Plea for Prison Education

In a decade of teaching, I have approached many a semester's end wistfully: another goodbye to students I have, week after week, intellectually bonded with. But this semester, wistful feels more like the blues.

I am soon to be exiled from pedagogical heaven: an English 101 class so academically voracious, they rendered my job effortless. My students not only read the material and took extensive notes on it, they read material weeks before I'd assigned it. They arrived armed with studied opinions about each text and page numbers containing relevant passages to shore up these opinions; they begged me for additional grammar worksheets and requested feedback on work they'd assigned themselves. When we read one particular Ralph Ellison essay, they groaned about how many times the piece had driven them to the dictionary, and I held back tears of joy: Oh for a roomful of students who studiously look up words they don't understand!

The blues run deeper, though. Students like those in my English 101 class are few and far between -- because they're incarcerated at Otisville Correctional Facility, the first class in a program I launched at John Jay College of Criminal Justice: the Prison-to-College Pipeline. The pilot program has a simple goal -- maximize the number of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people who go to college and succeed there -- and it was prompted by a question posed by John Jay's President, Jeremy Travis, who has written extensively about prisoner re-entry: "If over 700,000 people are leaving our prisons, how should the nation's educational institutions be organized to help them make a successful transition to free society?"

The Pipeline is designed with reentry in mind, offering for-credit classes, skills workshops and college and re-entry planning to a small pool of men within five years of release. The aim is to funnel them into the CUNY system, where they are guaranteed a slot. We take advantage of educational timing: The three to five years prior to release -- ripe moments for educational intervention -- are perhaps more likely to produce a re-entering community that avails itself of higher educational opportunities.

Via monthly learning exchanges during which John Jay students visit the prison and engage in classes alongside the incarcerated students, the program achieves two additional aims. We acculturate the incarcerated students to the college community of which they will, upon release, be a part. At the same time we acculturate, in a humanizing context, the John Jay students to the incarcerated population -- thereby impacting the way they undertake their future jobs as progressive leaders in the criminal justice and social service arenas.

I have watched the men in my class morph from "inmate" to "college student" -- a profound process with tangible increments: Eventually they stopped writing their DIN numbers on assignments, and grew accustomed to being called by their first names again (prison is a last-name-only milieu). Some are taking on college as part of a "let's-do-this-together" pact with their children, enrolled on the outside. Others return to a path foiled by missteps the last time around: One of my students was enrolled at John Jay 20 years ago, and looks forward to his triumphant return, credits under his belt.

But back to the blues: Programs like the Prison-to-College Pipeline -- shown time and again to be vastly valuable, in both public safety and prisoner re-entry contexts -- are scarce. There are precious few publicly funded post-secondary degree programs in American correctional facilities; the bulk of the some three dozen or so that do exist, including John Jay's, are privately funded and at constant risk of going broke. The result? Approximately 11 percent of state prison inmates have a college degree, compared to 48 percent of the general population. A 2004 survey found that post-secondary correctional education was available to only about 5 percent of the overall prison population.

This was not always so. In 1970, a century after the American Correctional Association Congress endorsed education behind bars, the New York State Corrections Law required New York's Department of Correctional Services to "provide each inmate with a program of education which seems most likely to further the process of socialization and rehabilitation." A year later, the Attica rebels demanded that America's prisons live up to this claim; over the next two decades, higher education in prison flourished, to the tune of some 700 degree-granting prison programs nationally. Federal support for these programs meant that incarcerated individuals were eligible for Pell grants, needs-based college funds for qualifying low-income students, and, in New York, Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) grants, as well.

But a shift in government spending between 1988 and 1998 turned the tide. During those years in New York, for instance, the operating budget for the public university system was slashed by 29 percent while state spending on prisons rose by 76 percent. In 1994, for the first time in history, New York State spent more on prisons than on universities. And shortly thereafter, the big blow came: Congress eliminated inmate eligibility for Pell Grants -- even though such education accounted for a mere one-tenth of 1 percent of the Pell Grants' annual budget. The results were dramatic. Within three years the national number of prison higher education programs dropped from 350 to 8.

This is a prodigious loss. The literal and metaphorical value of a college education -- to incarcerated men and their communities -- is colossal. For one, numerous studies have shown that the higher the educational attainment, the higher the reduction of recidivism; in one such study, inmates who possessed at least two years of college were rearrested at a rate of 10 percent, as compared to a general rate of 60 percent. That, of course, adds up to money saved. One study suggested that for every dollar spent on education, two dollars are saved by ducking the cost of re-incarceration. If we care about equitable prisoner re-entry and about reducing America's absurdly high recidivism rate, we should care about prison education.

The value of higher education behind bars transcends dollars and cents. Considering the fact that 1 out of every 100 Americans -- and more than 3 out of every 100 black men -- are in prison, truly increasing access to education demands that we take college to prison. If we are genuinely committed, too, to a criminal justice system that is not about punishment or revenge but rehabilitation and justice, higher education should be our friend. Studies have shown that it engages students in reading, analyzing, writing and mentoring, not to mention assessing choices and being persistent in the face of obstacles -- critical character traits that are more than just academic. Higher education also bolsters community commitment. One study found that after participation in college, prisoners and former prisoners were far more likely to offer advocacy, social supports, and services to other prisoners, their children and families.

All of this adds up to a very practical agenda, currently being promoted by groups like the New York-based Education from the Inside Out Coalition [http://www.eiocoalition.org] and the Pell Grants for Public Safety Initiative, led by Dallas Pell, daughter of Senator Claiborne Pell, for whom the Pell Grants were named. First, we should restore inmates' eligibility for Pell Grants and TAP. As EIO points out, such a step would cost the government some $5 to $10 million but would result in mid- to long-term benefits -- in terms of reduced recidivism, an increased number of tax-paying citizens, and fewer dependents on public assistance -- that outweigh the short-term cost.

Second, states should intensify appropriations for post-secondary correctional education programs and ensure that public colleges and universities receive state formula funding for serving incarcerated students. State and institutional policies can also encourage experiments with distance education methods and provide funding for corrections staff to participate in the college courses offered at correctional facilities.

In a recent report, 94 percent of state and federal inmates interviewed prior to release named one thing as their most pressing re-entry need -- over and above financial assistance, housing, employment and drug treatment. What did they demand? More education. For their and our community's sakes, let's give them -- including my soon-to-be former English 101 students -- what they want.

Calvin Ash, Maryland political prisoner?

Recommended for parole seven years ago, a 61-year-old inmate remains behind bars.


Dan Rodricks

12:22 p.m. EST, November 30, 2011

WESTOVER

—Nearly 40 years have come and gone since Calvin Ash, a hospital kitchen worker, committed his one and only crime: At the age of 21, he shot to death his estranged wife's boyfriend. A Baltimore judge found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison in 1972. Under the conditions of his sentence, Mr. Ash would one distant day be eligible for parole.

Thirty-two years later, in 2004, the Maryland Parole Commission considered and approved Mr. Ash for release. But there was a catch: In Maryland, the governor can reject the commission's recommendations and, unfortunately for Mr. Ash, his case did not reach the governor's desk until after Martin O'Malley had been elected, in 2006. Mr. O'Malley opposes all parole for lifers. He took another five years to act on Mr. Ash's case. When he did, he rejected it. So Calvin Ash is still in prison, at a cost of up to $30,000 a year to taxpayers.

I visited him inside the Eastern Correctional Institution, south of Salisbury, this week. He'd been tutoring another inmate in reading when called to the visiting room to meet with me and his brother, Carrington Ash, a retired postal carrier and the pastor of a small Baptist congregation in Baltimore.

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At 61, Calvin Ash is one of the older inmates at the Eastern Shore prison, and he's going to be 64, maybe 65, before he gets another shot at getting out.

Here's why: The commission won't recommend him for release again until at least 2014, the last year of Martin O'Malley's second and final term as governor.

"I was told it wouldn't be prudent to try again while O'Malley's governor," Calvin Ash said at ECI-Westover on Monday.

Mr. O'Malley refuses to commute the sentences of anyone serving life, and he doesn't explain his actions. "He's a politician," says another Ash brother, Julian Ash, retired from the Army and living in Oklahoma. "He doesn't want to take responsibility for this."

Attempts to learn why Mr. O'Malley rejected the recommendation for Calvin Ash were unsuccessful. Raquel Guillory, the governor's communications director, referred the question to David Blumberg, chairman of the parole commission.

But, of course, Mr. Blumberg can't explain the governor's reasoning in the Ash case or that of the other six inmates, all between 55 and 73 years of age, Mr. O'Malley rejected earlier this year.

(Maryland is one of only three states that still allow its governors to reject parole recommendations for lifers. Noting Mr. O'Malley's inaction on such recommendations, the General Assembly in its 2011 session set a time limit on this particular gubernatorial power; the governor now has 180 days to reject a commission recommendation before an inmate is freed automatically.)

Mr. Blumberg was familiar with Calvin Ash's case. He was aware of Mr. Ash's relatively young age at the time of the crime, a domestic first-degree murder. As in every case that comes before it, the commission assessed Mr. Ash's level of remorse, his behavior behind bars and plan for reentry.

Following procedure, Mr. Ash waited in line to get a psychological evaluation at the Patuxent Institution in Jessup. That took 18 months. He was there for more than two months, and, he says, his evaluation was positive.

That was between six and five years ago. Mr. O'Malley was on his way to becoming governor, and he was soon either ignoring or refusing parole recommendations for lifers. Four years later, when he finally took action, after being prodded by Maryland senators and delegates of both parties, it was to reject all recommendations, including Calvin Ash's. That happened in May.

So, follow the math on this messed-up system: Calvin Ash will be eligible for parole in 2014 or 2015 — some 10 years after he was first approved for it.

And he has to hope that the governor who succeeds Mr. O'Malley will be — like his Republican predecessor, Bob Ehrlich — open to at least considering the cases sent to him. While he was governor between 2003 and 2007, Mr. Ehrlich considered parole on a case-by-case basis. In four years, he commuted the sentences of five lifers, granted medical parole to one and denied 11.

In the mid-1990s, a previous Democratic governor, Parris Glendening, issued the "life means life" edict that Mr. O'Malley continues to embrace. In doing so, both men tossed aside the parole commission and a fundamental principle of our corrections system: that, with good behavior and the passage of time, some lifers might one day be eligible for parole. Mr. Glendening has since disowned his absolute approach, saying it was wrong and had politicized the parole process.

This is why some of their advocates and kin call the aging lifers, like Calvin Ash, political prisoners. "It's like they've been sentenced twice," says Carrington Ash.

We should either abolish parole or pull the governor's hands out of the process entirely. I vote for the latter.

Too Many In Prison Too Long

If Gov. Rick Scott and Florida legislative leaders would get over their obsession with privatizing prisons, perhaps they might focus on the real cause of Florida's runaway correction spending.

This state locks too many people up for too long.

A succession of "get tough on crime" mandatory minimum sentencing laws are primarily responsible for a state incarceration rate that is 26 percent higher than the national average.

An Associated Press report this month cited the case of a man serving a mandatory five-year prison sentence for possession of a handful of Lortab tablets, "prescription-only pills containing a small amount of a controlled substance but mostly made up of the same ingredient found in Tylenol and similar over-the-counter painkillers."

"Florida's prison system, which has about 102,000 inmates, grew more than 11-fold from 1970 through 2009, while the state's population increased just under three times," The AP reported. "Florida also has done away with parole and requires inmates to serve a minimum of 85 percent of their sentences, which have kept inmates behind bars longer."

CRIME DOWN, COST UP

Thus, Florida's corrections spending continues to escalate even as crime rates decline.

Citing data from "Right on Crime," a prison reform group that advocates doing away with mandatory minimum sentences and relying more on drug courts and substance abuse treatment for offenders, The AP report continued, "If Florida imprisoned people at the same rate it did in 1972-1973 the state would have only 23,848 inmates and be spending $446 million a year on prisons instead of $2.4 billion."


Privatizing prisons simply injects a profit motive into what Alison DeFoor, vice chair of the Center for Smart Justice, in Tallahassee, already calls Florida's "prison-industrial complex."

Real correction reform would involve locking up fewer people, not creating new profit opportunities for the private sector at taxpayers' expense.

State senator seeks ban on shackling pregnant inmates

Tallahassee, Florida - Opponents of restraining pregnant inmates say an anti-shackling movement is growing across the country and they want Florida to get on board.

State Sen. Arthenia Joyner calls the practice of shackling pregnant inmates demeaning and dangerous. The state currently does not have a law against restraints for pregnant women and Joyner wants one on the books.

She has filed a bill banning all correctional facilities, both state and county, from restraining women in labor or recovery, except in rare cases.

"It's demeaning. It's unnecessary. It can cause harm to the prisoner and to the fetus and it's important that we treat people, especially women who are pregnant, with humanity and dignity."

Policies on restraining pregnant inmates vary around Florida. A state policy prohibits restraints on pregnant women in labor, but allows restraints at all other times during a pregnancy and in recovery.

Some county jails in Florida have allowed restraints during labor.

Joyner says she understands the need for security, but she wants a law to spell out the rules for using restraints on pregnant women.

"It's necessary to put it in the law. We don't want a policy by the Department of Corrections because policies come and go at the whim and caprice of whoever is leading the department."

Joyner says restricting or banning restraints for pregnant inmates is supported by the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and nurse associations.

"They say this is unnecessary and they have joined in this effort across the country to make sure that states do not shackle pregnant women."

Currently more than a dozen states have adopted laws restricting or banning the practice of shackling pregnant inmates.

Sen. Joyner's bill would also create strict rules for restraining women in the third trimester of pregnancy. It would include a ban on shackles and mandate that wrist restraints be placed in front of a pregnant inmate so she could protect herself if she fell forward.

This is the second time Joyner has filed the bill in the Florida Legislature. It passed in the Senate on a unanimous vote in the spring legislative session, but died in the House.

L.I.F.E. PROGRAM

The L.I.F.E. Program (Learning Is For Everyone) at the New Jersey State Prison was established in 1985 in response to the needs of a growing illiterate inmate population. It is estimated that 75% of the inmates at New Jersey State Prison are illiterate or functionally illiterate reading below a fourth grade level. With prison education programs losing financial support, founder and community volunteer William Burke realized the need for a corps group of community volunteers, educators and inmates to work together towards the common goal of increasing literacy within prisons:

"I recognized the staggering illiteracy rate in the prisons and realized that a lot of these guys carry a stigma about their inability to read. I thought that a one-on-one tutor session with another inmate would give them the confidentiality needed to encourage them to come back to school. I also know there is a lot of talent in the prison population and the men could run this program themselves. All I had to do was ask the inmates and they jumped at the offer."

Now after seventeen years, this unique inmate-run program has successfully improved the literacy skills of 236 men and has allowed them to either acquire a GED certificate, have the ability to read a book to their children or letters from home.

Assistant Program Manager Gene Berta emphasizes the program's goals:

"If you can't read, you can't function. The guys realize this and they're tired of asking friends for help reading letters or writing home...A lot of guys can't go into the law library and work on their case to try to get themselves either a reduced sentence or an appeal process because they can't read."

The success of the L.I.F.E. program is due to the involvement of the inmates and their sense of ownership of the program. Inmates volunteer to tutor their fellow inmates for a two-hour session once a week. Each tutor is trained and certified by the Literacy Volunteers of America (LVA) as a certified reading instructor. LVA educators Robert and Anne McCleery hold classes to instruct inmate tutors on the best methods of instruction for adult literacy students. The L.I.F.E. inmate managers then match these tutors with students to begin their tutor-student sessions. Anne McCleery, LVA educator, affirms:

"My husband and I teach in many prison literacy programs and often see those programs dissolve. The L.I.F.E. Program is unique because the men are very dedicated and manage a consistently high quality program that has lasted these many years."

One of the unique aspects of the L.I.F.E.. Program is its recognition of learning disabilities among its students. The American prison population has a four times greater percentage of learning-disabled individuals than the general population. Although Learning Volunteers of America train the inmate-tutors with skills needed for reading instruction, a more specialized training using multisensory strategies is needed to teach the learning-disabled student. Volunteers from ABC Literacy Resources conduct additional tutor-training sessions to help them identify strengths and deficiencies in their students and to become skilled teachers of the Orton Gillingham-based instruction. Elaine Phillips, one of the founders of ABC Literacy Resources, states:

"With such disproportionately high numbers of inmates with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, it is vital that we give these inmate tutors the skills to recognize the impediments affecting their students learning."

The benefits to the New Jersey State Prison community are numerous. Not only are inmates improving their literacy skills, but also the program provides a cost-effective, purposeful prisoner activity and gives inmates working as tutors the chance to spend their time in a positive, supportive role while using organization and management skills. Over the years, the L.I.F.E. Program has come under the authority of three prison administrations that have recognized its value to the individual men. Prison Administrator Roy Hendricks recently commented:

"This institution is geared more towards compliance … Inmates are doing 50, 100, 300 years. If an inmate goes to school over a period of time, he begins to feel better about himself and the number of disciplinary charges he incurs are significantly reduced…We depend on our volunteers to provide positive programming for the men here at New Jersey State Prison."

Over the past seventeen years, the program has had 136 tutors and 236 students who have reached their personal goals of obtaining a GED, enrolling in school, reading a book, reading to their children or reading letters from home. One student received his GED and then became a tutor in the program. Program Manager William Brown states:

"We've had students who couldn't read or write and after completing the program, they got their GED. For us, that's a success story."

The L.I.F.E. Program was the first literacy program in the New Jersey prison system to use community and prisoner volunteers and has become a model for other literacy programs. The Program continues to tutor 44 students with 46 tutors and has a wait list for both new tutors and students. The L.I.F.E. managers have also assisted fellow Hispanic inmates to establish H.E.L.P. (Hispanic Education Literacy Program), a Hispanic literacy program. The managers have published a detailed manual with instructions and suggestions on managing the specifics of the program, recruiting tutors and community volunteers, fund-raising and publicity, and maintaining a relationship with prison officials. It is the hopes of the founders and managers that other correctional institutions will establish their own inmate-run literacy program.

The program depends on financial assistance from grants and private sources. This has allowed the program to remain financially independent, thus relieving New Jersey State Prison of the fiscal responsibility for the program. By receiving these donations, the L.I.F.E. Program has been able to successfully continue its mission.

Anyone interested in making a donation to support
the program can make checks payable to
"L.I.F.E. Program, New Jersey State Prison"

Mail to:
Peter Ronaghan, Business Manager
Business Office
New Jersey State Prison
P.O. Box 861
Trenton, NJ 08625-0861

The managers of the L.I.F.E. Program have prepared
a manual for those interested in starting an inmate-run literacy program
in correctional institutions. To receive a manual free of charge
or to contact members of the program, write to:

L.I.F.E. Program
c/o William Brown, Program Manager
77729-187619A
New Jersey State Prison
P.O. Box 861
Trenton, NJ 08625-0861

Push reading skills at prison

Building reading skills among prison inmates represents the kind of small idea that can pay off with much bigger results for those incarcerated, as well as the larger community.




The work of Rose Kreitinger, the Read Right coordinator at the North Dakota State Penitentiary, addresses a key barrier to getting a job and getting along in life for many prison inmates - the inability to be an effective reader. It's an obstacle to getting a good job. It's a hindrance to good citizenship.

We like that it's a practical, pragmatic program. It's no sea change. No silver bullet. No social makeover. It's a program that assists people with a fundamental skill: reading. It doesn't fix people; it gives people a tool for fixing their own lives.

Twenty percent of the 520 inmates at the state pen do not have a GED or high school diploma. That lack of basic education speaks loudly to the potential for recidivism. Prison authorities require those without a high school degree, or equivalent, to attend educational classes aimed at earning a diploma. It's a common-sense requirement.

It's hard to imagine the difficulties that people returning to their communities face after serving time. But to face the music with limited reading and other basic learning skills must be overwhelming. It leads to the "same old, same old." This not an issue for public sympathy; rather, it represents the potential for more lawlessness, for which the public pays for in taxes and is the victim.

Pumping up a felon's ability to read will not guarantee a job, a better life or a law-abiding life. But it can help. Effective reading also requires the development of logical thought processes and critical thinking. Add to that access to ideas and knowledge, all of which one might hope improves judgment.

Those prison inmates who constructively take part in the program have an opportunity to change their lives. That's the best anyone gets. The rest must be earned. What percentage of them will succeed, we do not know. We are not naive about the prospects. Turning someone's life around is remarkably difficult, as experience indicates.

The work of Kreitinger was presented by Tribune photographer Mike McCleary as a "Neighbors" feature on Monday. Her work deserves support and acknowledgement. She's making a difference.

www.sureshotbooks.com

A visit to the toughest cell block in California at Pelican Bay State Prison

Pelican Bay State Prison near the Oregon border houses some of California’s toughest, most dangerous inmates. About a thousand of those inmates are labeled prison gang leaders or associates.


They’re kept in indefinite isolation in the Security Housing Unit, or the “SHU” — a prison within the prison. Last month, hundreds of inmates in the SHU staged a hunger strike to protest the conditions there. They also protested the strict conditions for getting out. KPCC toured the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay this week.

A cement path from the prison staff entrance crawls up grey-graveled yards. An electrified barbed-wire fence encircles the perimeter.

Lieutenant Chris Acosta has worked at Pelican Bay for 21 years. "We call this like the 'no man’s land' out here, where there will be no inmates out here at all," Acosta says. "The only persons you’re going to see are the corrections officers, or maintenance staff cleaning up doing landscaping or security checks."

By “landscaping,” he means pulling weeds. There are no shrubs, plants or trees outside.

Inside, the SHU looks like any other prison: long corridors, tiers of cells with grated metal doors, dim fluorescent lights. But there is one big difference: Lt. Acosta asks the reporters what we hear.

"Guards," says one.

"Air conditioning," says another.

"There’s 600 inmates housed over here," Lt. Acosta says. "It’s pretty quiet over here in the SHU."

There are reminders that the Pelican Bay SHU is more dangerous than other prisons: red signs that read “Protective Vest Required,” and riot gear on a gurney outside the corridor.

And there are other warnings. Lt. Dave Barneburg monitors prison gangs. He reminded us reporters to think about what we say on the tour.

"Any inmate worth his salt down here already knows there’s a tour coming through the SHU and there’s a bunch of people coming through SHU." Barneburg says. "You’re talking to each other, you’re talking to us, but you’re also talking to the inmates."

Inmates in the SHU spend nearly every hour of the day inside individual 8-by-10 foot cells.

There’s just enough room for a metal sink and toilet, a built-in bunk bed, some shelves, a wastebasket and a desk. They’re allowed to have 10 books in their cell, magazines, newspapers, and for those with families that can afford to spend $200 to purchase it, a television with a cable hookup, that offers access to ESPN. The TV’s made of see-through plastic that shows all its components.

"The correctional officers and the staff love them because they’re easy to search," Lt. Acosta says. That's important, he explains, because throughout the years, "a lot of guys would take their TVs apart and hide weapons in them."

SHU inmates leave their cells each day for a 15 minute shower. Inmates also get 90 minutes to exercise in a concrete yard. The 15-foot-high walls block direct sunlight. Prison officials don’t allow exercise equipment in the yard.

Pelican Bay Warden Greg Lewis says that would be too risky. "Anything attached to the wall they would use to scale the wall," Lewis explains. "The other concerns we have is them cutting metal. These guys are good at cutting metal. That's metal they'd use to make weapons."

SHU inmates are allowed no phone calls. They see visitors only through a glass wall.

Inmates call the Pelican Bay SHU “the end of the line.”

Warden Lewis says 95 percent of the inmates in the Pelican Bay SHU ran criminal enterprises inside and outside prison. He says Pelican Bay is a life they’ve earned.

"I haven’t seen any validated gang member or associate yet that had not committed and been prosecuted for a crime, or they wouldn’t be in prison," Lewis says.

The Department of Corrections offers all inmates in the SHU a way out: renounce prison gang life – and tell Corrections officers everything you know about the gang. Do that, and you’re out of the toughest prison block in California.

Corrections officials didn’t allow media to talk to any of the inmates who participated in the hunger strike on the tour.