When Paul left school at the age of 15 with no qualifications, he had no big plans other than to earn money to contribute to his family. He was always interested in art, but not at all in his education.
This 17-year prison sentence led to him becoming the first in his family to attend college and a successful career in the arts and social justice fields.
“I'm approaching middle age and I never thought I'd be in the situation I am in today. This wasn't even a dream,” said the author, who requested that her last name be used in this article. Paul, now in his mid-50s, said: Times Higher Education.
“…none of it would have been possible if I hadn’t taken that first step.”
However, working in a prison is fraught with many obstacles, both before that first step and each subsequent step.
The Open University, which primarily provides education in prisons in England and Wales, has just under 2,000 students registered for 2023-2024, out of a total of around 82,000 prisoners.
Former Open University student Andrew Malkinson, recently released from prison after serving 17 years for a rape he did not commit, recently said he encountered “resistance” from prison staff while studying there.
Activists from England and Wales have spoken. The It revealed that participation had fallen during the coronavirus pandemic and has yet to recover, and explained how the growing digitalization of higher education and government inaction are slowing progress.
By contrast, their counterparts in U.S. prison reform recently celebrated perhaps their biggest advances in three decades.
The 1994 ban on access to federal Pell Grants meant that people who wanted to enroll in college courses had to pay their own tuition, effectively preventing most enrollments and forcing colleges to has become difficult to provide.
In the early 1990s, there were approximately 770 programs in place in more than 1,200 prisons in the United States, but by 1997 only eight remained.
A final reversal of the controversial decision, which was championed by President Bill Clinton and Sen. Joe Biden at the time, said Ruth Delaney, initiative director for the Vera Institute's Unleashing Potential Initiative. He said there was a “long political arc”. of Justice.
“We’ve reached a point where it’s almost a complete reversal,” she said.
“In the 1990s, there was bipartisan agreement to be tough on crime…and now we have bipartisan agreement that we need to deal with crime.” [rehabilitation] …University is the main vehicle for achieving that. ”
The Second Chance Pell Lab Initiative, which provides need-based Pell grants to people in state and federal prisons, will help more than 40,000 students enroll in higher education while incarcerated between 2016 and 2022. became.
Mr Delaney said the decision to completely remove funding barriers would have a huge impact on a prison system that had become akin to a “revolving door”.
“It affects people's ability to get a job and stay out of prison,” she says. “We know these programs will have a big impact on those two things for her. [access to higher education means] More and more people are being incarcerated, families are being torn apart, and more people are living in very poor conditions. ”
California Polytechnic State University's Department of Communication courses recently became the first to be approved by the U.S. Department of Education to provide Pell Grants to incarcerated students.
Delaney said he hasn't seen a significant increase in participants yet because of the lengthy bureaucratic vetting process, but he expects a surge in participants.
Vera, a national advocacy group working to end mass incarceration, estimates that up to 70 percent of the prison population is interested in college.More than 2 million people are incarcerated in prison or jail in the United States
Marie McCauley, program specialist and prison education expert at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Lifelong Learning, said insufficient recognition of the importance of prison education, combined with limited funding, remained a major barrier. It becomes. .
In addition to policy and financial obstacles, logistical challenges often impede progress on the ground.
“In-person classes can pose challenges for educators due to security clearances, limited communication with students, class interruptions, inmate transfers, and ever-changing numbers,” McCauley said.
“Online higher education courses, on the other hand, can have limited access for prisoners due to lack of connectivity and suitable electronic equipment.
“Finally, even when valuable higher education opportunities exist within prisons, inmates often lack information about how to enroll or participate in these programs.”
Mr McCauley said investment in prison education was a valuable long-term economic and social investment, adding that some “MoodleBox” programs, such as France's MoodleBox, which allows inmates to access courses without an internet connection, are a valuable long-term economic and social investment. “This is a noteworthy initiative.”
Similarly, a virtual campus known as Educonline@Pris brought digital higher education opportunities to prisoners in Portugal, and the National Open University of Nigeria contributed significantly to the advancement of prisoners' education by allocating funds to 3,000 prisoners. she said.
Learning Together was the innovative Prison University Partnership (PUP) in England and Wales, which was abolished following the London Bridge terrorist attack. Usman Khan, who was attending a Cambridge University education program while in prison, murdered deputies Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones at London's Fishmongers Hall in November 2019.
With the end of the program, most other PUPs have been put on hold pending further guidance from the Ministry of Justice.
Almost five years on, Prisoner Education Trust (PET) chief executive John Collins said now was the time to publish the guidance anyway. The risks involved, or whether it's something you don't think should happen.
“In our view, they have benefits and can be delivered with care, but they require guidance.”
The key barriers to prison education would have been familiar to American people and politicians 30 years ago.
Peter Stanford, director of the Longford Trust, which supports young serving and ex-prisoners into higher education, questioned why prisons were not allowing established prisoners to use supervised internet. .
“The answer seems to be that politicians are worried that public opinion will view them as soft on prisoners,” he says.
“They talk about prisoners using their internet access to control criminal empires or harass their victims. There is little evidence that this is an actual threat and that access is monitored. If it is misused, it may be removed immediately.
“People who really want to earn a degree have too much to lose by breaking such rules.”
Stanford University says its blatant refusal to allow inmates control, supervision, and limited access to the internet deprives them of the burgeoning potential of online higher education. Ta.
“In a broader sense, if prison is for rehabilitation, we don't want people to come out and commit crimes again. We release people who understand that now the whole world is digital. need to do it.
“When you refuse to develop those skills, you increase your chances of reoffending.”
PET's Mr Collins said that while the Open University had done a great job in making courses available on paper, it was “quite outdated” and made both applying for and studying for a degree more difficult. said.
“As more and more higher education in the community moves online, it will become increasingly difficult to bridge the gap between what is available in the community and what is available in prison, and the cost of delivering courses will become increasingly expensive. “I think I'll do it,” he says. He said.
“It will be a bigger challenge for both providers and learners. In other higher education settings, you would hardly expect people to do everything on paper.”
Prisoners in England and Wales are also currently restricted from applying for tuition loans until they have less than six years left on their sentence.
Stanford said the policy delayed many people in prison from spending their time productively and earning degrees.
“While they wait, their enthusiasm wanes, creating more problems in the prison, which drives up staff costs and generally results in wasted opportunities,” he said.
The House of Commons Education Select Committee, then chaired by former higher education minister Robert Halfon, also called for the six-year rule to be abolished in 2022.
But the Ministry of Justice said the policy struck “the right balance between access and value for taxpayers”.
Obstacles such as the digital divide and delays in inmates starting their studies did not deter Paul.
It took him five years to complete the first year of his fine arts degree in time for his release, posting and marking his handwritten work and waiting for it to be returned.
However, these issues deter many others.
“Overcoming obstacles may help some people by developing thinking and learning skills, but I've also seen many things fall by the wayside,” says Paul.
“It can be very difficult and disconcerting to not get the feedback you need when you need it.”
He completed a further year while on license and a further two years upon release, eventually graduating with first class honors from Teesside University.
Since then, he has completed a master's degree and worked for a charity supporting people at risk of homelessness and training young prison officers, as well as acting as a mentor for a prison arts charity.
Paul said he could never have imagined himself in this position 30 years ago, and it all comes from the belief that higher education has given him.
“I've spent so much of my life taking away, and now I'm spending so much of my life giving,” he added. “It may sound a little pitiful, but that's who I am. I can already see the future.”
