Prison college programs ignore structural issues
For American households, the college experience means an investment, a mark of wealth and a time for growth. Its importance is rarely understated; degrees go hand in hand with higher incomes for graduates and open up unparalleled professional opportunities.
The White House announced plans earlier this month to open funding for college-level education for prison inmates, a group often overlooked in discussions about educational equity. The investment, rare in a system struggling to accommodate surging inmate populations, may provide critical resources toward educational and job opportunities. Four California state prisons plan to launch community programs this fall for inmate education. The Obama administration has already begun to open up inmate access to Pell Grants. Recent plans paint an optimistic view of education reform, yet they do not resolve root causes for California’s intrinsic educational inequality.
Considering that government action has traditionally neglected education for prisoners, the move provides a refreshing shift in policy. Prison inmates have been historically banned from qualifying for student aid, and affording classes when released is often difficult, especially because felons have increasingly limited educational and professional options. Compound the lack of resources with impoverished backgrounds that prisoners may come from, and they have little means with which to further their education.
While education is an integral piece of economic access and job opportunity, federal plans for student aid fail to provide the comprehensive institutional reform that California’s prison system needs. Education Secretary Tim Duncan sells the plan as a solution to prison overcrowding that pushes inmates “back on track” and thus reduces recidivism, but the plan does not address overcrowding — the root of educational inequality for prisoners who face obstacles to education while in prison and after being released. To impact overcrowding, lawmakers cannot simply introduce educational access within prisons; they must address greater issues with incarceration.
California’s notoriously stressed prison system has never been a surprise; with a 137.5 percent occupational capacity (a reduction from its previous 144 percent in 2014), it faces problems ranging from lack of medical equipment to the absence of psychiatrists. California may have released thousands of prisoners in a move to deal with overcrowding, but conditions remain dire. National incarceration rates remain the highest in the world, beating out countries such as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Federal solutions to better educational access are a Band-Aid solution to deeper problems in prison. Tough laws such as the “three strikes” provision, originally mandating three-time serious felony offenders a minimum sentence of 25 years to life, stuff an already bloated system and provide little real help.
The upholding of tough-on-drugs policies from the 1980s continues to contribute to massive rates of imprisonment in California. Aggressive criminalization rates in the state have hurt men of color, a group faced with disproportionately higher sentences for drug offenses despite comparable drug use by racial groups across the board. Considering this community already faces discrimination when pursuing professional and educational opportunities, the increasing incarceration of men of color further inhibits their ability to pursue higher education. Opening up grants for students in prison and conducting undergraduate courses will improve conditions within prisons, but it will not resolve structural policy situations that create stressed prison systems in the first place.
Understandably, lawmakers face difficulty cutting prison populations and focusing on community empowerment. At an hourly rate of $1 – 3 a day, prisoners are a massive source of cheap labor. On the surface, “job training” develops on-site skills and saves millions but comes at an intrinsic conflict of interest with advocates in sentencing reduction and more rehabilitation service programs. Even now, lawyers for the state’s attorney general office use labor as an excuse to block sentence reduction programs for nonviolent inmates. Sold as economic empowerment, the convenience of free labor provides an obstacle to furthering the personal development of prisoners and incentivizes lawmakers to ignore the overcrowding that keeps citizens in jail instead of pursuing an education.
The Obama administration may be trying to improve conditions within prisons, but it must also question the “why” behind prison overcrowding to effect larger, structural change. Improving educational programming can be incredibly powerful, both in its economic access and moral and political development. However, fixing prison conditions is no answer to resolving the policies that trap entire communities in the prison system and hinder opportunities to attend college. Recent progressions towards prison education only highlight the scope of what must be done to really improve prison conditions.