Education Department Undersecretary Ted Mitchell this week called Pell grants “one of the key levers that we have” to increase the college completion rate. A corrections counselor took a look at Martin’s grades and suggested he try to take some classes on the inside. Last year, I earned six credits.
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Looking again, he describes each the credential and the tutorial experiences that got here with it as “life-altering”. “Eight years after I left prison I was running a $23 million non-profit as senior vice president”. “To me that’s a small funding”.
They got the chance to share their story with the Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, first in a group discussion, and then to the public. He said the program was indicative of the country’s growing focus on rehabilitation for prison inmates.
“The vast majority of these programs were really reliant on federal aid funding”, Ajinkya said.
One inmate waited nearly a year to get into the Goucher program.
The Second Chance Pell Pilot Program restores the opportunity for some incarcerated citizens to receive these grants – as well as, hopefully, an education that will help them become more productive and contributing members of their communities. “If you can give people the skills and give them the interest in learning – they’re going to be less likely to return to crime”, says The Sentencing Project’s Executive Director, Marc Mauer. “It’s very important for people to do that in order to break the cycle of crime”. The administration won’t say how much it will cost, or whether the funds will in any way limit the Pell grants available to low-income families outside the prison system.
Other Republicans have cited concerns about the program’s cost, and some are simply hostile to the idea of taxpayer money being used to educate felons. Vivian Nixon knows how an education can affect an inmate’s mindset all too well.
“We offer the same courses in the prison that are offered on the main campus”, Liat Melnick, the administrator for Goucher’s prison program, told Fusion.
“I went into a deep depression and it was frightful”, Nixon said of the experience.
Collins said the Obama administration’s plan to put the cost of a free college education for criminals on the backs of the taxpayers is consistent with its policy of rewarding lawbreakers while penalizing hardworking Americans. The Obama administration believes that prison inmates shouldn’t be omitted.
Congress amended federal law in 1994 to keep inmates in federal and state prisons from using federal Pell grants to pay for college tuition, fees and textbooks. For every dollar invested in correctional education programs, RAND estimates that $4 to $5 are saved on three-year reincarceration costs. The federal grants would go towards the prisoners’ education while behind bars.
Collins’ bill would block prisoners from receiving Pell grants under any circumstances.
Now, at 43, Martin serves as the president of Just Leadership USA, an organization aimed at significantly reducing the incarceration rate nationwide by 2030.
Everyone deserves a second chance.
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Advocates are cautiously optimistic that the administration’s experiment will yield data on the benefits of correctional education that could assuage naysayers. At the same time, she adds, it’s critical that ex-offenders understand the value of the degree or certificate program they enroll in, and what kinds of financial responsibilities they’re taking on.
