Since Pell Grants have become available to people pursuing degrees from prison, every state and the Federal Bureau of Prisons has tried to expand access to higher education.<\/p>\n
What they haven\u2019t all done, however, is create a learning environment that supports college-level study. Some states still ban inmates from almost all technology, leaving students to get by with textbooks and paper assignments. Others don\u2019t give students computers, forcing them to write term papers on tablets that lack external keyboards. When students have the right technology, internet access becomes the barrier, as safety risks surrounding how people might abuse it outweigh educational opportunity.<\/p>\n
Getting a degree is one of the best ways to reduce the chances of ending up back in prison after release. Some researchers have clocked precipitous drops<\/a> in the recidivism rate, as this metric is called, because of educational progress and its connection to landing a good job.<\/p>\n But the United States\u2019 punitive approach to incarceration clashes with the promise education holds for lower recidivism. Bidhan Roy, the director of the prison education program at Cal State Los Angeles, has studied the restorative approach in Norwegian prisons<\/a> and highlights the contrast.<\/p>\n \u201cThe concept in Norway is that the time that you serve is the punishment, and the job of the prison is to prepare the resident to become your neighbor again,\u201d Roy said. \u201cWhen you think about it like that, it changes the goal of what you do in there. Why would you not give research skills and internet access?\u201d<\/p>\n Slow progress<\/p>\n When Roy started developing Cal State L.A.\u2019s Prison Graduation Initiative<\/a> about a decade ago, students had to do all their work on paper. To give the incarcerated students a way to conduct research, Roy would pair them with an on-campus peer who could go to the library on their behalf and print out materials for Roy to bring back inside the prison. Once students started using desktops from prison classrooms, he pre-loaded academic articles onto thumb drives they could explore offline. Since the fall of 2023, his students have been able to search a much wider universe of academic articles online through EBSCO, a company that aggregates online research databases. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation purchased EBSCO access for students at all of the state\u2019s prisons.<\/p>\n Little by little, Roy\u2019s classes have improved for both instructors and students. Grading handwritten essays, he said, was a nightmare in itself. And students have blossomed as scholars with the power to set their own research agendas \u2014 a level of autonomy that contrasts sharply with their otherwise hypercontrolled lives inside.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s an empowerment that comes from that, and a learning of not just the narrow research skill, but the broader bits,\u201d Roy said.<\/p>\n Still, students run into walls.<\/p>\n Suzanne Carlson, 42, received her GED in prison and then went on to get two associate degrees before joining the bachelor\u2019s degree program Roy oversees. When she started taking classes, they were with textbooks and paper only.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was awful,\u201d she said. She loves and appreciates the laptop she has now at the California Institution for Women in Chino, but the EBSCO database gives her access to only pre-approved resources and \u201cthe library here is very small in comparison to the things that we need,\u201d she said. She finds herself wishing she had a Google equivalent to do her work.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand why [that\u2019s not available] and I wouldn\u2019t want to open any avenues for criminal behavior to happen,\u201d Carlson said, but she is sure there\u2019s a way to prohibit criminal activity while still opening up more of the web to people who are incarcerated.<\/p>\n In fact, other states have figured it out. Kansas, Ohio and Wisconsin all have firewalled internet options for students on a separate network that keeps the prison\u2019s network safe and still gets students access to educationally relevant websites.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019d love to see more states headed in that direction,\u201d said Ruth Delaney, who directs the Unlocking Potential Initiative<\/a> at the Vera Institute, a criminal justice nonprofit. The initiative aims to expand high-quality post-secondary education in prison and Delaney\u2019s team has worked with departments of corrections as well as education leaders in most states since 2012. Their early outcomes inspired the Obama administration to allow some low-income students to access Pell Grants even while incarcerated, eventually leading to full restoration of Pell Grants to this population. Congress approved<\/a> that expansion during the first Trump administration and it took effect in 2023.<\/p>\n Still, even under the best circumstances, incarcerated students are broadly kept away from much of the human knowledge housed online. Unlike in K-12 schools, where filters are designed to restrict student access to dangerous or inappropriate websites and otherwise let students browse freely \u2014 a blacklist approach \u2014 prisons operate with whitelists: facilities identify specific sites users can access and the rest of the internet is blocked.<\/p>\n Both methods keep students from more websites than necessary to maintain order and safety. In K-12 schools, The Markup, now a part of CalMatters, found<\/a> high schools kept students from sex education websites, LGBTQ+ resources, Wikipedia and a wide range of other websites they sought out while doing homework. In prisons, Delaney said, the whitelist approach leads to \u201ca very closed-down version of the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n For students who are incarcerated, the limitations co-opt their educational opportunity. Carlson finished her bachelor\u2019s degree this spring but worries the credential won\u2019t get her as far as she\u2019d like.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I go into the career world when I get out and I go to apply for a job and I work next to others, I don\u2019t want to have stunted growth because of things like this,\u201d Carlson said.<\/p>\n National trends<\/p>\n Last year, the Vera Institute released a report about the quality, equity and scale<\/a> of prison education, assessing each state\u2019s progress across 15 metrics. Two measures of quality were technology and academic research and library access. California received a \u201cgreen\u201d on both measures, a sign that its system offered \u201cadequate\u201d access, but Carlson\u2019s research experiences illustrate the limits of \u201cadequate.\u201d<\/p>\n Nationwide, the Vera Institute named technology an area to improve. Only 17 states were labeled \u201cadequate\u201d for providing technology that shrinks the digital divide and supports the quality of education. Just 12 hit the same mark when it comes to providing access to academic research materials and library services.<\/p>\n