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Research has well documented the far-reaching benefits of providing educational opportunities for individuals who are incarcerated, applicable to the students themselves and society. Given the many benefits, it is encouraging that access to U.S. Pell Grants for incarcerated students was restored in July 2023—the first time in nearly 30 years that need-based federal postsecondary financial aid was available to individuals in U.S. prisons. Although Pell Restoration enables an increasing number of colleges and universities to provide higher-education-in-prison (HEP) programs, this funding guarantees nothing about the quality and rigor of programming. In fact, relatively little is known about the nature, scope, and quality of HEP programs within the United States, and it is both timely and important to deeply examine these topics. The present study is a critical qualitative case study of three college-in-prison programs in the southern United States. To interrogate the nature and quality of the programs, this study explores the experiences and practices of program faculty and directors, drawing from research and scholarship in education and the behavioral sciences to examine two key areas: faculty training and the educational experiences made available to students. Multiple forms of data were collected, and two main findings emerged: (a) faculty training is piecemeal and limited, and (b) the educational experiences made available in the three programs are simultaneously empowering and disempowering. Using Ladson-Billings’s concept of the education debt (including its historical, moral, and economic underpinnings), this study highlights that the three college-in-prison programs—like many HEP programs across the United States—both contribute to and challenge the education debt.

This book explores California's prison system in the context of vocational education reform. For prisons in the early twenty-first century, ideologies of evidence-based management meant that reform efforts to change the purpose of prisons from punishment to rehabilitation through vocational education required “evidence” to justify policy prescriptions. Yet who determines what constitutes evidence? In political environments, solutions are typically pre-conceived, which means that the nature of the evidence collected is also preconceived. As a result, key assumptions about outcomes are often wished away to show improvement and be accountable. Through a detailed analysis interspersed with stories from the authors' experiences “behind the wall” among California's prison population, the authors challenge the nature of evidence-based research as used in the prison environment. In the process they describe the thorny problems facing reformers. Summary from publisher

Recent expansions in prison school offerings and the re-introduction of the Second Chance Pell Grant have heightened the need for a better understanding of the effectiveness of prison education programs on policy-relevant outcomes. We estimate the effects of various forms of prison education on recidivism, post-release employment, and post-release wages. Using a sample of 152 estimates drawn from 79 papers, we conducted a meta-analysis to estimate the effect of four forms of prison education (adult basic education, secondary, vocational, and college). We find that prison education decreases recidivism and increases post-release employment and wages. The largest effects are experienced by prisoners participating in vocational or college education programs. We also calculate the economic returns on educational investment for prisons and prisoners. We find that each form of education yields large, positive returns due primarily to the high costs of incarceration and, therefore, high benefits to crime avoidance. The returns vary across education types, with vocational education having the highest return per dollar spent ($3.05) and college having the highest positive impact per student participating ($16,908).

\"\"I am an eighties baby who grew to hate school. I never fully understood why. Until now. Until Bettina Love unapologetically and painstakingly chronicled the last forty years of education 'reform' in this landmark book. I hated school because it warred on me. I hated school because I loved to dream.\" -Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of How to be an Antiracist In the tradition of Michelle Alexander, an unflinching reckoning with the impact of 40 years of racist public school policy on generations of Black lives In Punished for Dreaming Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan's presidency ushered in a War on Black Children, pathologizing and penalizing them in concert with the War on Drugs. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. Today, there is little national conversation about a structural overhaul of American schools; cosmetic changes, rooted in anti-Blackness, are now passed off as justice. It is time to put a price tag on the miseducation of Black children. In this prequel to The New Jim Crow, Dr. Love serves up a blistering account of four decades of educational reform through the lens of the people who lived it. Punished for Dreaming lays bare the devastating effect on 25 Black Americans caught in the intersection of economic gain and racist ideology. Then, with input from leading U.S. economists, Dr. Love offers a road map for repair, arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its core\"-- Provided by publisher.

A primary focus within the field of higher education in prison is to ensure that federal, state, and institution-level polices helping to develop and sustain programs remain durable. Current justifications for policies in support of programs often rely on a predominantly recidivist lens, advocating for programs on the grounds of their likelihood to lower rates of reincarceration and save taxpayers money. However, many advocates argue that such an instrumental approach does not fully capture--and, in fact, might obscure--more foundational civic principles in support of access to higher education in prison. The present article seeks to address the question of how best to justify and defend programs by investigating the perspectives of students themselves, exploring how they articulate the value of their own experiences within a higher education in prison program. Employing interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), the study explores the experiences of 21 formerly incarcerated students who participated in the Boston University Prison Education Program (BUPEP), one of the longest running higher education in prison programs in the country. Participants noted that the program offered a much-needed space to participate in a community of mutual respect and mentorship, develop skills and explore personal interests, and regularly engage in noncoercive, nonprescriptive practices of self-reflection and inquiry. The program provided a space unique within prison contexts, helping to break cycles of both literal and figurative imprisonment. Such findings have important implications for both policy and curricula development within higher education in prison.

\"A practical resource for teachers, librarians, administrators, and community stakeholders who work with incarcerated youth and adults. This book includes examples of literacy practices that have been successfully used with those incarcerated around the nation, including creating graphic novels, starting book clubs, writing about gang life, having reading buddies, reading urban literature, developing a writing workshop, [and] establishing a school library\"-- Provided by publisher.

Since 2008, numerous Argentine documentary films have explored the complexities of prison education. Prison education documentaries from other countries usually focus overwhelmingly on the possible success of “rehabilitation.” In contrast, this article argues that contemporary Argentine prison education documentaries encourage critical, at times quasi-abolitionist, perspectives on imprisonment by challenging both punitive attitudes and liberal beliefs in the reinserción (reintegration) of prisoners into society. Analyzing the documentaries El almafuerte (dir. Roberto Sebastián Persano, Santiago Nacif Cabrera, and Andrés Martínez Cantó, Argentina, 2009), 13 puertas (dir. David Rubio, Argentina, 2014), Lunas cautivas (dir. Marcia Paradiso, Argentina, 2012), and Pabellón 4 (dir. Diego Gachassin, Argentina, 2017), it draws on insights from film studies and criminology to show how these films provide intersectional and structural critiques of imprisonment. “Touristic” and affective encounters between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people serve to challenge comfortable viewing positions predicated on internal-external carceral and cinematic divides. These films teach spectators that outside spaces, people, and institutions are all central to the meaning, problems, and incoherence of incarceration in Argentina. Desde 2008 se han producido numerosos documentales que abordan las complejidades de la educación en contextos de encierro en Argentina. En otros países, los documentales sobre la educación en contextos de encierro suelen centrarse en el posible éxito de la “rehabilitación.” Por el contrario, arguyo que los documentales argentinos contemporáneos desarrollan perspectivas críticas y a veces cuasi abolicionistas sobre la cárcel, desafiando tanto el punitivismo como la fe liberal en la reinserción de los presos en la sociedad. Analizando El almafuerte (Roberto Sebastián Persano, Santiago Nacif Cabrera y Andrés Martínez Cantó, dirs., Argentina, 2009), 13 puertas (David Rubio, dir., Argentina, 2014), Lunas cautivas (Marcia Paradiso, dir., Argentina, 2012) y Pabellón 4 (Diego Gachassin, dir., Argentina, 2017), combino teorías cinematográficas y criminológicas para demostrar cómo estos documentales ofrecen críticas interseccionales y estructurales sobre el encarcelamiento. Los encuentros “turísticos” y afectivos entre sujetos carcelarios y no carcelarios sirven para desestabilizar las formas dominantes de mirar la cárcel, estructuradas por divisiones rígidas entre lo interno y lo externo. Estos documentales demuestran que los espacios, las personas y las instituciones fuera de la cárcel son centrales al significado, los problemas y la incoherencia de la cárcel en Argentina.

In the last few decades, the al contours of American social inequality have been transformed by the rapid growth in the prison and jail America's prisons and jails have produced a new social group, a group of social outcasts who are joined by the shared experience of incarceration, crime, poverty, racial minority, and low education. [...] carcerai inequalities are intergenerational, affecting not just those who go to prison and jail but their families and children, too.

The article seeks to read the contribution of religious practices in prison education within the broader framework of spirituality as a search for meaning in life. It argues that religious engagement can foster cognitive and emotional development, providing inmates with a sense of purpose, community, and resilience that supports their reintegration into society. In light of an exceptional and extremely significant experience with APAC in Brazil’s police-free prison model, the authors aim to highlight the nexus between spirituality and re-education in contexts of deprivation and restriction of personal liberty. Indeed, the APAC (Association for the Protection and Assistance of the Convicted) model, central to this study, emphasizes nonviolent coexistence, responsibility, and spiritual care as part of its rehabilitative framework, with a significant reduction in recidivism rates and costs compared to traditional prisons. The model’s approach, grounded in a collective sense of responsibility and spirituality, aligns with Viktor Frankl’s and Paulo Freire’s theories on meaning and liberation, illustrating how spirituality can transform prison environments and promote social justice. The study concludes that spirituality in prisons not only aids individual redemption but also calls for structural changes to support reintegration, marking a shift towards a more human-centered penitentiary system.