Article from the Village Voice about efforts to increase and improve the education of prison inmates. These seem largely due to efforts of enlightened and caring individuals. (
Voice)
The program is one of several created in the 22 years since Congress
banned inmates from receiving federal Pell Grants, causing a precipitous
drop in the number of prison college programs, from about 350 before
the 1994 ban to just 12 by 2005. (The controversy was nodded at on the
most recent season of Orange Is the New Black, where the warden's
idea to rehabilitate the women under his watch by establishing an
education program at his privately run prison is shot down by his
corporate bosses.) But while prison education advocates have long
mourned the loss of college programs behind bars, legislators have been
slower to come around. Last year, the federal Department of Education
stepped in to begin expanding prison college programs, after federal
policy had for two decades dismissed college courses for inmates as a
waste of public funds.
....
Last year, following President Obama's announcement of sentencing reforms
and of his intention to grant early release to 6,000 nonviolent drug
offenders (as of June, he has released 348), the federal Department of
Education announced the launch of a pilot program that will once again
allow some inmates to receive Pell Grants, despite the 1994 law. In
June, the DOE announced that 67 partnering universities would enroll
about 12,000 incarcerated students in over 100 correctional facilities
across the country beginning this fall. Seven of the schools, including
John Jay, Hostos, and LaGuardia Community College, are in New York.
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