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Been There, Done That

Aug 5, 2013 No Comments

Kathryn Griffin, 53, leads an unconventional reentry program at the Harris County Jail in Houston for women who have been incarcerated for prostitution. Griffin’s mission to rehabilitate women who were living on the streets supporting their drug addictions by means of prostitution is not just a coincidence. She has lived this lifestyle herself. Photo courtesy statesman.com

Griffin’s experience began 30-years ago, when she toured as a singer with Rick James. She developed a cocaine habit that she couldn’t sustain with her singing income alone. Griffin had to sell herself for sex to keep up with her drug addiction.

After 20-years of accruing drug and prostitution charges, Griffin was facing up to 35-years in prison. Her life turned around after she completed her drug treatment and sentence.

Griffin was volunteering at Harris County Jail when she met up with Adrian Garcia, then city councilman and currently Harris County Sheriff. The program was spawned when Garcia was inspired by Griffin’s vision of creating a program for women serving time for prostitution. Garcia is responsible for launching the program that dozens of women have successfully completed.

The College and Community Fellowship’s Programs for Women

Jul 11, 2013 No Comments

By Christopher Zoukis

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 in the their lives post prison. The programs offered by CCF have seen recidivism rates reduced by half among their participants and, to date, they have helped women earn forty-six Associate degrees, 120 Bachelor degrees, sixty-one Master’s degrees, and one PhD. Image courtesy www.dildaymeyer.com

Introduction to CCF’s Programs

Founded in 2000, CCF developed a platform to help women who have been incarcerated change their lives through access to higher education. Their program is quite unique because it is a multifaceted approach. Founders understood that mere access to college isn’t enough; they realized that participants required other services to support their educational goals. Along with programming designed to help women attend state and city colleges, there are programs designed to help women obtain important life skills like financial literacy and learn the importance of networking, for instance. Mentoring and meeting as a community of women is also an essential component of CCF’s platform. Their program is far from other re-entry programs that offer short-term assistance. CCF is helping to dramatically change impoverished and previously incarcerated women’s lives to decrease the likelihood of a return to prison and to enhance the lives of participating women for the better.

The Bard Prison Initiative: Reducing Recidivism and Changing Lives

Jul 10, 2013 No Comments

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.

College Program for Women at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility

Jul 8, 2013 No Comments

By Christopher Zoukis

Established in 1997, the Image courtesy highered.com offers women who are inmates at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility coursework that leads to an Associate of Arts degree and beyond. In the wake of 1994’s discontinuance of public funds supporting prison education programming, various colleges in the region met to design a new Bedford Hills program supported by private funding. Operated by Marymount Manhattan College, the program features faculty from other nearby colleges as well such as Mercy College, Sarah Lawrence, Barnard College, and others. Currently, each semester regularly sees more than 175 students working toward their degrees and earning college credits.

The Program

Marymount Manhattan College offers Bedford Hills program participants the opportunity to take college preparatory classes, earn an Associate of Arts degree, and earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology. To apply to the program, inmates of Bedford Hills must have either a high school diploma or a GED. Moreover, upon taking placement tests, participants may initially have to take college preparatory classes to prepare for the degree programs themselves. All degree-seeking candidates must take general education courses just as any other college-level students.

An Approach to Restorative Justice: Pennsylvania Prison Society

Jul 3, 2013 No Comments

Dianne Frazee-Walker

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.

Own Your Future: New Colorado Program to Reintegrate Ex-Offenders

Jun 27, 2013 No Comments

By Chase Squires College In Colorado has developed an online program to guide felons back into work, and life. College In Colorado – a Colorado Department of Higher Education initiative that helps students and families explore careers and plan, apply, and pay for college – launches a free online program on July 2 – aimed

South Carolina’s Prison Initiative Program: An Overview

Jun 24, 2013 No Comments

By Christopher Zoukis

Academics and something more—that’s what this initiative is about; yet that something is the defining feature of this program that is working to endow prisoners with more than just academic skills when they leave prison behind them and return to South Carolina’s streets. The South Carolina Prison Initiative Program is a partnership between the state’s prison system and Columbia International University. The something that defines this initiative is its faith-based component that provides inmates with spiritual tools they need to make a genuine life change. Image courtesy ciu.edu

Columbia International University Prison Initiative

According to the university’s website, “The mission of the initiative is to train inmates to live in accordance with biblical principles and to equip them for the unique ministry opportunities available to them because of their incarceration.” Along with general academic subject matter, prisoners are instructed in general ministry skills. Essentially, the program seeks to empower participants so that they may positively empower others upon their release. Inmates who participate in the initiative’s accredited Associate of Arts program designed particularly for them are equipped to embrace the ministering opportunities that may be open to them upon their eventual release from prison. According to CIU, 95 percent of all the inmates in the South Carolina prison system will be released at some point.

Inmate Eligibility

Not all inmates are interested or eligible to participate in this program. According to CIU, “The program will be offered only to inmates who meet and maintain high standards of personal conduct” and the school’s “standards for academic achievement.” That said, this program provides an alternative for qualifying inmates; rather than do nothing to improve their skills while incarcerated, they can work toward a brighter future by learning viable skills that can effectively help them change their lives and reduce the risk of returning to the lifestyle or behaviors that caused them to go to prison in the first place.

Correctional Education Association: Connecting Prison Educators for More Than 80 Years

Jun 3, 2013 No Comments

By Christopher Zoukis

Teachers often receive credit for taking part in a profession that ensures a more prosperous future for young people. Educating children is seen as an investment for tomorrow, even if modest teachers often laugh at the idealized perception of their chosen career.

Educators engaged in nontraditional forms of teaching, however, can sometimes be forgotten. Since 1930, the Correctional Education Association has sought to change that. This U.S.-based nonprofit organization is an indispensable resource for prison educators both domestically and abroad. It’s a group made up of educators on the front lines in making for a better tomorrow, but who often face even greater challenges than their K-12 counterparts. Image courtesy ceanational.org

Providing prisoners with an education, according to most analysts, is a way to positively change both a prisoner’s character and abilities. Prison educators are a critical component in the rehabilitative process and in the criminal justice system overall. The problem is that many of these educators don’t receive the same level of pay or benefits as traditional teachers, and it’s very difficult for them to network, collaborate and advocate their own positions.

The Correctional Education Association is a membership-based organization with the initial purpose of uniting prison educators. Once educators join, however, they quickly discover that uniting prison educators is only a small component of the services offered by this organization.

The Correctional Education Association advocates legislatively for increasing the prevalence of education in prisons and jails. One of the stated goals of the organization is “representing juvenile justice and adult correctional education to broader educational, political and social agencies.” In addition to this work, the organization also attempts to inform broader audiences of its goals through a number of different avenues.

BU’s Prison Education Program Thrives Despite Pell Grant Ban

Apr 17, 2013 No Comments

By Emily Payne

Boston University students know their acronyms, and from their college names to where to grab some lunch, it seems as if everything is shortened to a cryptic, insider code. Here’s one that is less known: PEP. Type that into the BU search bar and you’ll find pages on the Pep Band, Professional Education Programs, and Pre-Engineering Programs. But “bu.edu/PEP” will take you to a place where students are less likely to visit: the BU Prison Education Program. Turns out that Boston University is one of the leaders of prison education in Massachusetts, a sector of higher education that has been struggling to stay afloat.

Back in 1994, Congress passed a major crime law amendment which banned prisoners from receiving Pell Grants, a major source of federal aid. The misconception of the time was that giving prisoners Pell Grants reduced the amount of aid available to non-criminals. In reality, according to The Real Cost of Prisons Project, only 25,000 of 4.7 million available Pell Grants had been distributed to prisoners in that year, which comes out to about 0.5% of the funds. Nonetheless, because of the controversy surrounding the cause and the many misconceptions of its use, the aid diminished.

But why should we care if criminals get an education, you say? After all, we all stayed out of prison (for the most part) so that we could go to a university, receive our degrees, obtain successful jobs, etc. Well, according to a report of the Institute of Higher Education in 2005, higher education for prisoners “remains a crucial strategy in efforts to reduce recidivism and slow the growth of the nation’s incarcerated population.” Basically, a higher education provides an outlet for prisoners and gives them options upon release. They leave prison in a better position to hold a job and become an upstanding citizen, rather than revert back to the lifestyle that led them to prison to begin with.

Friends Outside

Dec 15, 2012 No Comments

Imagine the impact on children and families that have a parent or spouse in prison. Incarceration affects many more people than just the prisoner.

On any given day, there are an estimated 2 million children in America that have at least one parent in prison. How do these children and families cope with this family separation?

In California, there is a service called, Friends Outside. Since 1955, Friends Outside has been a visionary, pro-active child and family advocate helping families, children and incarcerated individuals cope with the trauma of arrest and incarceration, find a new direction, and move forward with their lives.

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