By Cheyenne Galloway
WASHINGTON, DC – Incarcerated people may be eligible for a federal Pell Grant to help pay for their education, claims the U.S. Education Department, noting that “as many as 700,000 of them [prisoners] are broadly eligible for the aid,” which has the potential to grant people across the country higher education opportunities, according to a story in USA Today by Open Campus.
The USA Today story said research has found a plethora of benefits with prison education programs. They increase the chance of obtaining a job for those released from prison and also diminish the possibility of that newly-released person returning to prison.
Studies, the Open Campus story adds, have also discovered several positives for educating prisoners who are sentenced to life. Educated life prisoners often become mentors; thus, fostering a beneficial prison environment that promotes growth.
“The expansion of Pell Grants has been a long-sought change since the 1994 crime bill eliminated them for people in prison and ended the majority of prison education programs. Although educating people in prison has been shown to have a number of benefits, the new money may be difficult for many to access for a host of reasons,” said USA Today.
The author explains that people have advocated for the expansion of the Pell Grant to incarcerated people since the 1994 crime bill, which eradicated most if not all of the instituted prison education programs.
However, for some such as Caddell Kivett, a 52-year-old man who is held in a facility in North Carolina, access to these aid programs is not guaranteed, said the story, noting for months he conducted phone calls and sent letters “to colleges that offer accredited, paper-based correspondence courses,” to only be met with defeat.
He later found out that the Pell Grant federal aid is only available at prisons that offer “Pell-eligible college programs,” something his current prison does not offer. Unfortunately, albeit the recent expansion of the Pell Grant to incarcerated people, most won’t be able to receive a college education this coming school year, said USA Today.
The story notes, “Right now, incarcerated people in fewer than a third of state and federal prisons have access to postsecondary education, and much of what is offered doesn’t lead to an academic degree.”
This is due to the countless barriers to access and limitations to financial aid as Pell is not eligible for those wishing to go to graduate school or have finished their undergrad due to “the lifetime limit of 12 semesters,” said Open Campus’ USA Today story, adding there are not enough spots for all those who wish to receive an education. And some facilities also exclude potential students because of a particular conviction or sentence.
Quadaire Patterson, a 34-year-old prisoner in Virginia, discloses his experience to USA Today in taking courses behind bars with the Pell Grant aid, explaining, “The word around here on Pell is next to nil. There has not been one whisper of upcoming higher education programs that will utilize Pell Grant funds. What I’ve learned is that being incarcerated presents a critical daily ultimatum, will we choose to actively better ourselves or passively ‘do time.’”
Although the reinstituted Pell Grant is meant to eliminate these barriers to entry, especially those pertaining to someone’s prison sentence, the Council of State Governments Justice Center explains how states still have a general discretion of who is eligible for prison education aid, such that “half of the states impose restrictions on participation in education based on the length of a person’s sentence,” cites USA Today piece by Open Campus.
As well as barriers, many states are facing challenges in finding ways to offer the maximum amount of resources to incarcerated students, and states and colleges are relearning how to function in an environment with fewer technological facilities and with fewer college resources in general; this includes but is not limited to printing and distributing paper-based applications, according to USA Today.
A few states, such as California, are relying on their state funds to provide prison education programs, such that incarcerated people will have the opportunity to take community college courses with the Pell Grant aid, added the USA Today story, noting, “Many states, including Washington and Kansas, will be building on programs that were part of the Second Chance Pell Experiment, which offered access to federal aid for some students starting in 2015.”
As a result, the USA Today story said “only about two percent of the state and federal prison population—about 1.3 million people—is projected to participate in higher ed programs this fall, according to estimates by the Education Department and the Vera Institute.”
Director of Vera’s Unlocking Potential Initiative, Margaret diZerega, even expects college access to prisoners will remain quite limited due to staffing, space, and facility shortages, coupled with the slow adoption of modern-day technologies and resources, contending, “Getting even 10 percent of the prison population enrolled in the coming years would be a good deal.”
