The impact of post-secondary education opportunities inside and outside of the carceral system.

Benard McKinley is a legal researcher, paralegal and Northwestern University graduate student starting his law degree this fall. He’s working to become a civil rights attorney in order to champion the underdogs he sees in the world.

He hopes to open a nonprofit legal clinic in the West Side of Chicago once he gets his law license. The goal is to provide civil rights education to the community as well as different mental health resources. 

Benard started on this path after witnessing injustice during his time incarcerated. Northwestern University’s Prison Education Program (NPEP) gave him the opportunity to learn and fight back against these injustices. 

NPEP is one of very few programs founded in the last ten years that not only offers education opportunities to incarcerated individuals, but also offers them the opportunity to earn degrees in social sciences. 

“It opens up doors of opportunity,” Benard says of prison education programs. “The opportunities to get those degrees [while incarcerated], coming home, the opportunities are gonna come towards them.”

The Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP) is another program that empowers incarcerated students, with a focus on humanities and social science. 

Thanks to PNAP’s partnership with Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) and its University Without Walls program, incarcerated students can work toward and earn their bachelor’s degrees—just like Northwestern’s program. 

Dr. Erica Meiners, a professor at NEIU and board member of PNAP, emphasizes the importance of the program and others like it.

“People deserve the opportunity to rebuild their life and try to be accountable for the harms that they’ve done and to try to be a contributing member of their community, and we do that through education,” she says.

PNAP’s program includes artistic opportunities, too, which allows students to express themselves and create. These creations also serve to shift the persistent narratives surrounding the carceral system.

NPEP and PNAP’s programs offer incarcerated students opportunities, an invaluable resource in rebuilding one’s life.

The reason many universities don’t offer post-secondary education programs stems from the 1994 Crime Bill, which cut access to Pell grants for incarcerated students. As a result, hundreds of higher education programs shuttered, leaving people who were incarcerated without a means for significant educational growth.

For reference, prior to the 1994 Crime Bill, an estimated 13.9% of people in state prisons had taken college courses after being incarcerated. Ten years after the bill, a reported 7.3% of people in state prisons had taken a college course in prison.

Now, 30 years later, progress has been made in reversing this. An Obama-era program, Second Chance Pell, was one of the first efforts made to rectify the damage done by the 1994 Crime Bill. It started by approving a set of over 70 college programs that could offer Pell grants to incarcerated students.

The program was expanded to include more schools throughout the years, but thanks to the FAFSA Simplification Act, has been made unnecessary.

Passed in 2020, the FAFSA Simplification Act overhauled the federal student-aid system and overturned the 1994 Crime Bill’s ban on Pell grants for incarcerated students.

This change finally went into effect this academic year, meaning people who are incarcerated have the same entitlement to federal financial aid as they did in the early ‘90s. 

Despite these reforms, there are still very few opportunities being made available to people who are incarcerated. The Illinois Coalition for Higher Education in Prison lists only a small number of programs encompassing all education opportunities in the state.

On this list, there are only 15 higher education programs offered throughout Illinois prisons. Fifteen programs for over 34,000 people currently being held in Illinois state or federal prisons. 

DePaul University’s Inside Out program offers higher education courses at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, the same prison NPEP and PNAP operate out of. Inside Out students can earn transferable college credits, but aren’t able to earn degrees.

Beyond education inside the carceral system, returning citizens also face challenges when seeking higher education.

On many university applications, there is a box people are required to check to indicate if they have a criminal record. Opponents believe this actively discourages returning citizens from applying to higher education.

Meiners touches on the impact of this: “So those processes, those boxes on university admission forms or university employment forms, really actively discriminate against people who [the] systems [have] impacted.”

DePaul’s Students Against Incarceration (SAI) group has advocated to “Ban the Box” for years now in order to solve this, with varying success.

Alyssa Unger, SAI’s Events Coordinator, further explains the impact of the box.

“If you check YES to that box, whether you were 16, 25, or when you were in your 30s and trying to find higher education… chances are they’re not accepting you as a student anymore.”

SAI is involved in other advocacy work, too, including working with DePaul’s Inside Out program, supporting parole and re-entry legislation and providing resources to marginalized communities.

The importance of post-secondary education programs within the prison system cannot be overstated. Supporters believe that programs like NPEP, PNAP and even DePaul’s Inside Out are truly life-changing and life-saving.

“Education is very much a need within the prison walls, not only to help them come home and be more productive citizens in a community, but also to be more sufficient and efficient,” Bernard said. 

The Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit advocacy group, detailed in a 2022 report just how impactful post-secondary (university/trade school) opportunities are.

Personal growth and upward mobility were some notable benefits. Statistics also showed that simply having a post-secondary education program at a prison was linked with much lower rates of violent incidents inside, making the prisons safer for everyone.

Those who received a post-secondary education were also reported to have a 48% lower recidivism rate, meaning that many were able to escape the carceral cycle and live free lives thanks to education opportunities. 

Meiners shares a key takeaway that she thinks more people should consider when talking about the carceral system.

“People who are incarcerated are somebody’s brother, somebody’s sister, somebody’s mother,” she says. “Somebody’s cousin, right? They’re not, you know, aliens from some strange planet.”

Header by Sofi Martinez