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The First Step Act: A Good First Step Indeed!

If it passes, the First Step Act will dramatically change life for thousands of inmates in America and will tackle, head-on, some of the problems that lead people to prison and keep them there. Many long-overdue items in the Act include banning the shackling of pregnant and postpartum women (was a woman in labor ever

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Why Teach Liberal Arts in Prison?

Liberal arts. Anyone studying this subject is frequently acquainted with an eye roll followed by, “And how are you supposed to get a job with that?” Liberal arts have a bad rap, and that is highly underserved. The truth is, liberal arts is among one of the oldest courses of study in the world! While

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What is the Prison Studies Project?

The Prison Studies Project (PSP) is an initiative that created a nationwide directory of higher education prison programs in the United States. The index was completed in 2008 and is updated regularly. The project was completed in partnership with the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice. According to PSP’s website, “PSP aims to

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New Grant to Support Prison Education in New York State

The Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) provides college degree courses for persons in upstate New York prisons. Believing that “any person can find instruction in any study,” the leaders of CPEP see this education as a fundamental part of any successful re-entry program. CPEP was launched after an act of Congress, and the resulting legislation

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Congress Weighs Future of Second Chance Pell Grants

In 1994, as part of the Clinton-era tough-on-crime Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, Congress stripped from the Higher Education Act of 1956 (HEA) prisoners’ eligibility for federal Pell grants for lower-income students. But in July 2015, the Obama Department of Education (DOE) created a pilot Second Chance program under a different HEA section to

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Sitting Pretty: Vocational Prison Education Preps for Life After Prison

Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, California, has a beauty salon. It started as a vocational prison education program in 1996 when the facility was for women only. Although it’s a men’s prison now, the salon, and the esthetician program, remain in place. It’s a unique way of learning job skills in the prison system, and

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Will Congress, Administration Let Inmate Pell Grants Expire This Year?

The Higher Education Act of 1965 created the Pell Grant program, designed to help low-income students afford college; an amendment to that law in 1972 explicitly made inmates eligible to apply for Pell Grants, now the federal government’s largest educational assistance program for college students. But a provision added by Congress to a 1994 crime

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Should Prisoners Be Eligible for the Pell Grant?

By Christopher Zoukis The connection between education and the likelihood of prisoners returning to prison upon release is clear. According to various studies, prisoners who become educated stay crime-free in the community longer than those who don’t, and the higher the education received, the less the chance of recidivism. However, there is one major issue

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Female Prisoners Learn How to Code

Historically, careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math have been overwhelmingly held by men, but in recent years there has been a continued push to have women take notice of these careers as well. Known as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), these positions require higher education and advanced training, and these

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