College in Prison 101: Recommendations on Developing & Implementing Meaningful Higher Education for Incarcerated Students
By Pavithra Nagarajan, Senior Research Associate, and Neal Palmer, Research Project Director
Across New York State, the College-in-Prison (CIP) Reentry Initiative helped expand access to higher education in state correctional facilities, enrolling over 900 incarcerated students from 2017 to 2022. CUNY ISLG researchers conducted a process evaluation of the Initiative and assessed its goals and achievements. With reinstatement of federal Pell Grants eligibility for incarcerated individuals, CUNY ISLG provides recommendations for institutions looking to establish new or expand existing programs
Given the recent restoration of federal and state funding for financial aid for incarcerated students, institutions have the chance to offer great number more people college in prison. As institutions across New York—and the country—prepare to establish new or expand existing programs with this reinstated funding, the field at large needs for more guidance on how to best navigate the myriad challenges of doing so. As detailed in Expanding Opportunities for Education & Employment for Students in Prison, the College-in-Prison Reentry Initiative (CIP) helped state correctional facilities expand access to higher education within their prisons, serving over 900 incarcerated students from 2017 to 2022. The many achievements of the Initiative can serve as a model for college in prison across NYS, and offer informative lessons for the nation as a whole.
The recommendations included in CUNY ISLG’s report can help education providers, corrections, and other stakeholders consider how best to prepare for and carry out their missions to provide high-quality postsecondary education to students who are incarcerated. Drawing from the report, these recommendations are grouped into five substantive areas and include:
Coordination and Collaboration between Stakeholders
Offering college in a correctional setting requires the coordination of many stakeholders that, traditionally, may be accustomed to operating more independently. Accordingly, meaningful communication and intentional collaboration are required to facilitate the smooth operation of college in prison. Relevant stakeholders should:
Establish buy-in among facility staff for college-in-prison programs.
Align application and enrollment processes across providers as much as possible.
Ensure alignment between corrections agencies and education providers around student eligibility requirements, planned transfer, and releases.
Establish clear data-sharing and security protocols early on to ensure the ethical use and exchange of student information.
Allocate sufficient staffing resources to track performance and adapt programming as necessary.
Participate in learning communities in order to create a shared knowledge base about the administration and instruction of college-in-prison programs.
Align course offerings and standards across postsecondary educational programs offered in a given region or among participating education providers in a common initiative.
Academic Resources and Supports
CIP stakeholders were committed to providing students with an educational experience that, as much as possible, mirrored the experiences of students in the community. However, many education providers operate with limited resources, and they operate programs in facilities concerned first and foremost with ensuring the safety of incarcerated individuals, corrections staff, and visitors. With this balance in mind, stakeholders implementing similar initiatives should:
Update and expand access to library and college-level reading materials in facility classrooms and student spaces.
Ensure that physical spaces and resources are conducive to learning.
Increase availability of remedial coursework to support academic preparedness and writing skills among students.
Incorporate early and ongoing supports and interventions for writing needs
Instruction and Pedagogy
Across CIP, education providers and their faculty emphasized their commitment to providing high-quality, rigorous instruction to incarcerated students. As detailed in this report, teaching in a carceral environment is accompanied by many challenges unique to the setting that can impact the quality of instruction, but there are ways to mitigate that. In order to ensure that college-in-prison programming is commensurate in quality to college education in more traditional settings, those interested in adopting similar programs should:
Recruit faculty prepared for the realities of teaching in carceral settings.
Offer training on and promote inclusion of trauma-informed pedagogy for faculty.
Replicate the faculty-student relationships of on-campus learning as much as possible.
Establish in-person instruction as the primary mode of course delivery.
Consider remote instruction specifically to expand access to coursework (when in-person instruction is not feasible), materials and enrichment.
Academic Reentry
CIP focused explicitly on incarcerated individuals who are approaching their release back into the community. At its core, the Initiative invested in education as a means to improve post-release employment outcomes and stability, and provide a more strengths-based means of ensuring public safety. Nonetheless, stakeholders experienced many challenges when it came to students’ reenrollment in degree programs post-release, as well as observed gaps in academic supports and services that could provide meaningful differences for students navigating education, employment, and life in the community. Education providers and other jurisdictions interested in adopting similar programs should:
Provide students with copies of transcripts and other relevant documents at regular intervals.
Coordinate with postsecondary institutions to support re-enrollment after release.
Regularly conduct labor market research to determine which fields of study could best prepare students for projected job openings.
Foster connections among college-in-prison alumni, and among alumni and mentors.
Provide opportunities for faculty to maintain some form of regulated contact with students after release to mirror the mentoring and support that traditional students receive in the community.
Practical Reentry
Students faced a number of practical reentry concerns upon release into the community. As education providers learned, students had many practical needs—such as housing, employment, and food security—that were not being fulfilled by the existing infrastructure. Stakeholders also experienced challenges when developing and administering reentry support prior to and following release from incarceration; this was due to limited capacity and expertise and the varying availability of resources across the state. Accordingly, stakeholders and individuals interested in pursuing similar initiatives should:
Coordinate and systematize educational reentry policies and practices between education providers, corrections, and other stakeholders as appropriate.
Develop streamlined communication protocols and processes between providers, corrections, and other stakeholders regarding reentry planning.
Offer support for job-searching and securing employment.
Increase funding for reentry resources to expand availability and depth.
Incorporate supports for acclimating students to the Internet and developing comfort with technology.
Develop and codify a set of best practices to support successful reentry
For more, see the report and the accompanying executive summary. Also refer to the Vera Institute’s interim outcome evaluation report here, which finds a 66 percent reduction in reconviction among CIP students compared to their peers.
Photo by NuPenDekDee on Adobe Stock.