2. Education in Prison
Background
Incarceration started to increase in the 1970s with changes in federal and state legislation that severely limited judges’ power of discretion in sentencing. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, commonly known as the Crime Bill, introduced draconian sentencing requirements and incentives for states to adopt tough-on-crime laws, thus laying the groundwork for mass incarceration as we see it today. As a result, the number of adults incarcerated in prisons and jails in the U.S. grew from around 360,000 in 1981 (Bureau of Justice Statistics) to more than 2,200,000 in 2020 (American Civil Liberties Union, “Mass Incarceration”). At the same that incarcerations started to rise, federal funding for education began to decline. In 1994, federal and state funding for education were completely eliminated with The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (Public Law 103-322), which amended the Higher Education Act of 1965 to the effect that no basic educational grant would be awarded to any individual incarcerated in any Federal or State penal institution. All incarcerated people, who come mostly from lower income households which rely on federal Pell Grants and the New York State Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) to pay for college, became ineligible for these as well as for other federal and state financial aid. With no funding, between 1990 and 1997 the number of prison college programs in the United States fell from 772 to 8 (Sawyer). Mass incarceration continued to rise. Prisons continued to grow, and the business model of the industrial-prison complex continued to value cost effectiveness and – in privatized prisons - profit over rehabilitative educational goals.
The failure to invest in education in prison is not just economic policy. It is a white supremacist strategy rooted in slavery, designed to perpetuate the system of apartheid established in the time of Jim Crow. The excuse for the current system - that America needed a “war” on drugs - was embraced not only by the Republican Party, but also by the Democrats. It was the Clinton administration that signed into law a system of mass incarceration, creating what Michelle Alexander called “a permanent underclass […] that would leave millions of people, overwhelmingly people of color, permanently locked up or locked out” (Childress).
The Center for American Progress reports that nearly 75 percent of those in state prison and 60 percent of those in federal prison have no high school credential but only about a third of those without it successfully obtain one during their prison terms (Bender). This means that about 766,000 incarcerated adults do have the necessary certification to enroll in college. It is our duty as a society to give them the means to go to school and the support to achieve academic success.
In 2015 the Obama administration launched the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program, an experimental program that allowed 12,000 incarcerated students to receive Pell Grants at 681 selected prisons (Federal Register Doc. 2015-18994). The future of the Second Chance Pell program is always unsure because institutions have to reapply every year. It has a lot of support, however, and in 2019 congress pointed to its success as it proposed an amendment to the HEA that would reinstate federal financial aid for all academically eligible incarcerated people. This amendment was not adopted. Instead, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy Devos announced an expansion of the Second Chance Pell program (which the current administration calls the Second Chance Pell “experiment”) in 2020-21 which more than doubles its size by adding 67 new postsecondary institutions throughout the U.S. (St Amour).
In 2018 Congress passed The First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill which provides $375 million in new funding for job training and education programs in federal prisons (First Step Act). The amount of funding that will go into federal prison college programs, however, is unknown; the bill privileges churches and “other outside groups” for access to funds (George). While all funding is a step in the right direction, the First Step Act benefits comparatively few students in prisons and jails because it is a Federal Bureau of Justice reform bill that affects only federal prisons, which hold only about 181,000 of the 2.2 million people currently incarcerated in the United States. The remaining two million people in state prisons, state detention centers and county jails do not benefit in any way from the First Step Act. Instead, these institutions continue to serve as vehicles to push racist reactionary policies designed to oppress and disenfranchise large segments of the population, and to reap huge profits from the prison-industrial complex as they do so.
Reducing recidivism
A landmark analysis of correctional education programs published by the RAND Corporation in 2013 covering 30 years of research shows that that prison-based education reduces short-term recidivism by 43% and long-term recidivism by 29% (Davis et al.). The same study shows that prison-based education lowers incarceration costs, yielding $4 to $5 of taxpayer savings for every dollar invested in helping incarcerated people learn (Davis et al.). The Vera Institute of Justice further observes that communities benefit over time, because “when parents, including incarcerated parents, complete college, their children are more likely to do so, thereby disrupting the typical cycle of poverty and incarceration” (“Fact Sheet”). It is thus in the interest of our communities and of our larger social fabric that we give people in prison the opportunity to acquire skills that will help them get jobs, which will in turn help underserved communities gain economic stability and move a little closer towards having some of the safety that privileges the middle class.
Incarcerated people come predominantly from low income households. Only about 59% of people serving prison terms have high school diplomas, compared with about 82% of the general population, and only about 24% have attended college (Bender). Instead of providing these people with opportunities to enroll in postsecondary education programs, the criminal justice system continues to segregate the least fortunate and most vulnerable members of society in institutions which utterly fail to prepare them for life after release. And most people serving sentences in prison will be released. The main goal of prison should be to prepare them to be useful, productive and not unhappy members of the communities they return to or become part of upon release. In the words of Natasha White, a formerly incarcerated advocate and a leader in in the #CLOSErikers and #buildCOMMUNITIES campaigns,
What we have now is a race- and poverty-based system, for punishing and oppressing, not rehabilitating black and brown people. What we need is more Assertive Community Treatment for mental health concerns, more re-entry support for people coming home from prison, and programs for youth whose parents are incarcerated or addicted, so they have no need to turn to the streets.
The prison-industrial complex attempts to dehumanize; humanities scholarship does the exact opposite. Because Digital Humanities uses technology for humanities research, it involves learning transferrable technical skills and is thus as a choice of study both healing and pragmatic, furthering system-impacted students’ intellectual and professional growth and making it statistically less likely that they will recidivate.
The digital divide
Most prison courses are book-based and most writing is done by hand. Facilities are under-resourced and low-tech, and students are denied internet access. In normal conditions, some incarcerated people who can afford to pay for email services do have limited access to web-based technology. Federal prisons give some incarcerated people access to an email service called Corrlinks, for an exorbitant fee. Some prison libraries have computer rooms where incarcerated people can research their cases and read other cases that the BOP chooses to share. On these computers users can enter their passwords and connect directly to the BOP database that corresponds to their case. Many prisons also have computers for taking the GED but these computers belong to GED Testing LLC and are only ever used for taking the actual GED exam; all practice exams are paper-based. When incarcerated students take the GED, one of their biggest challenges is typing the extended response (a four to seven paragraph essay in 45 minutes) on a clunky computer. They can only prepare for this part of the exam through writing long hand, and many students fail that part of the exam the first time round because they are not able to adequately prepare.
The value of education in prison is clear. However, while the number of people in prison in the U.S. increased a staggering 700% from 1972 to 2010 (American Civil Liberties Union, “Mass Incarceration”), prison college programs fell by 98%. In 2015, only 35% of prisons reported offering college programs and these programs served only 6% of the total state prison population in the U.S. (Delaney et al.). Due to the lack of funding, prison-based education programs are extremely low-tech, and simply do not have the capacity to teach students computer skills. This is a huge problem in terms of student preparedness for the current job market which places tremendous value on digital competencies.
Technology changes fast. All students, not just those who wish to specialize in digital humanities or work in tech, need training in digital skills. For them to be competitive job applicants when they leave prison they will need to know how to use digital technologies at work. They will also need to know how to use technology in their everyday lives. In writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education about the successful incorporation of digital technologies in a liberal arts curriculum at Bryn Mawr, Beckie Supiano argues that although today’s traditional-age students are digital natives, there is a difference between familiarity with digital technologies and understanding these, and while students may know how to find information online they do not necessarily know how to evaluate its trustworthiness. In this, prison populations are no different from the general population. However, time spent in prison places them at a huge disadvantage because during the time they are locked up they cannot keep up with changes in programs and software. Those who serve long prison terms will find that their basic user knowledge becomes obsolete. If they study digital humanities in prison, however, they will come to have an edge that a lot of people on the outside do not. As Supiano notes, “Growing up using apps doesn’t mean you know how to build one.” Learning how to build apps will give incarcerated students not only a critical and extensive knowledge of how programs work but will also make them super users of these and as a consequence, attractive to potential employers in the tech sector and beyond.
The current digital divide between prisons and free communities puts formerly incarcerated at a disadvantage not only in terms of jobs but in terms of knowledge that enables them to navigate a data-driven society that trades in information. This stops them from civically engaging through digitally informed advocacy work in the public sphere. Because a large part of digital humanities is to question and critique digital systems and tools it uses, the study of digital humanities involves learning a lot of technical skills. These are useful in understanding not only the tools used in humanities research but also information systems and computer programs that underlie most of the infrastructures we depend on in our everyday lives.
The right to an education
In the United States, education is not a fundamental constitutional right. Two recent civil action suits brought to state and federal courts, however, argued that the failure of public schools to teach students to read and write is in effect depriving them of their constitutional right to participate in democratic government.2 Some suits went further and argued that postsecondary education is a prerequisite for economic equality and should be available to all and free, and that not providing all citizens with the means to participate fully in civic and economic spheres violates equal protection rights. Other countries have recognized the need for such protections in The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966, which commits its parties to work toward ensuring the granting of a number of basic rights including the right to primary and postsecondary education. As of September 2018, the Covenant had 169 parties. By 2020 a further four countries, including the United States, had signed but not ratified the Covenant (Wikipedia contributors, “International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”).