Education and Incarceration

It may seem like an odd thing to talk about but when one considers that the percentage of prisoners who have extremely little formal education is extremely high, it becomes a subject worth investigating. Not all states have the same rules and regulations for prisoners and neither do federal prisons. For some inmates prison represents the only opportunity they may ever have to earn a degree, certificate or diploma.  For others the opportunity is not made available.

Without getting too involved in moral platitudes about whether or not prisoners should be given access to education let’s look at what is out there; some of it is quite interesting. For example, at Angola Penitentiary 150 inmates have earned Bachelor of Arts degrees from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.  An interesting inmate who has received his BA in social studies wrote a senior thesis titled, "The Diet of Punishment: Prison Food and Penal Practice in the Post-Rehabilitative Era," It fits with his passion for gardening. He was released this year after serving 12 years for armed robbery.

Meanwhile at the Jess Dunn penitentiary this year five inmates earned associate degrees from Connors State College and 11 earned a general equivalency diploma (GED). Those aren’t huge numbers but they do represent a portion of the prison population we can hope will no longer need to offend. While many inmates don’t aim quite as high as a degree masses of them manage to leave prison with a high school equivalent. Hopefully this will create opportunities for success for these guys once they’ve done their time.

Many people in penal and education industries think it will make a difference. One guy who did a degree in computer information systems while serving a 19 year prison term is now on the outside running a large computer network. One of his teachers from Tulsa College had this to say, "I think the offenders value this as an opportunity to make a change in their life," she said. "They grow as an individual and change some of their values that they had when they came in."