College - Convict Style

Monday morning I participated in a meeting with representatives of DOC’s central office, the warden and his staff, and the local community college. Craig, DC, Saleem, and I – the four main college aides – were asked to speak about our prison college program. See, we have funding again (a big shout out to my cousin who sent the article about Bard College. I gave it to our principal who sent it to the community college. Within a week, Bard and the college were talking.). In January, two programs for liberal arts (under a partnership with Bard and SVCC) and a Veterans college IT program funded under the GI bill. Another school – Virginia State University – has offered to take our students at release and enroll them as degree candidates.

Things are looking up for college inside. Perhaps that is because people in power are starting to admit what those of us in here know: the only effective program to combat recidivism is education. I said that at the meeting. With the warden and the assistant department director sitting there I told them what I’d seen, namely that you can have a hundred re-entry programs, but none will match the results that a college education gives.

Afterward, Dr. Hayes, the community college’s “Coordinator for Prison Education Services” pulled me aside and thanked me for my impassioned remarks. Dr. Hayes earned her PHD last year with a dissertation analyzing African-American inmates and higher education behind bars. And I do feel passionate about educational opportunities for the incarcerated. Only 1.2% of all Virginia inmates have a college – or more advanced – degree. Over 70% have a high school diploma or less, with 42% not even having a high school diploma or GED.

The vast majority of men I’ve met in here have known nothing but failure in school. And that failure carried over into failure in employment. Earning potential and stable employment with an employer who provides benefits are significantly less for the under-educated. Financial success in America is quite literally determined by the extent of a person’s education.

All the problems the incarcerated faced “BP” (before prison) are compounded on release. Only a college degree has been shown to provide the released prisoner with the job skills and self-confidence necessary to avoid a return trip to the system.

The Commonwealth of Virginia spends more than $25,000 a year to keep an inmate behind bars. That same inmate can be educated at one-fifth of that cost, roughly $5,000 per year. As I told the assembled participants the other day, I teach reading to five men each afternoon. Not one of those men (ranging in age from 31 to 65) reads above a second grade level. To a man, they tell me I’m the first teacher they’ve ever had who has taken the time to teach them phonics, and to read to them. Yes, they make progress; but their road to success when they leave here is limited.

College is coming back here. For the lucky few who get in, it is the chance of a lifetime, a chance to put this behind them.