College Behind Bars

I worked in prisons for three years, a women's prison in Las Vegas and a co-ed prison in Washington, DC. There was a time when rehabilitation was the main focus of prison, based on the fact that almost all inmates return to society. Back then, many educational programs were available to inmates, and Pell Grants were accessible to help pay for them.

But since 1981, there's been a real and seemingly permanent shift towards punishment. College programs for inmates disappeared, even high school programs dropped off. Inmates were excluded from getting Pell Grants, too.

Personally, I've always been in favor of rehabilitation--health care (physical and mental), education, and job experience. The experience of incarceration itself is pretty punishing anyway. And those investments--rather small, actually--help reduce recidivism. And don't we all want that?

 

Prison labor is a pretty big market. The more prisoners there are, the more labor there is to be sold.

 

Isn't the purpose of prison to educate inmates to become better citizens?

 

That's the stated purpose. I don't think it works like that in reality.

 

In my experience, inmates who had jobs were paid at least minimum wage. This was true whether they worked outside the prison or for a prison industry.

What is sad is when they labor for the prison itself or on public work crews. Then they're often paid pennies per hour.

By the way, chain gangs are ridiculous. In my experience, only minimum security inmates were allowed to work outside the confines of the prison. Minimum security inmates do not have to be restrained. They do not have to be guarded by correctional offers--armed or not. We had inmates who left the facility each day to do jobs in restaurants, casinos, etc. They changed clothes, walked out the door, hopped the bus, went to work, and returned afterwards, all without being supervised.

On the other hand, medium and maximum security inmates never left the facility to work. When they did leave, they were accompanied by two correctional officers--one armed and one not. They were required to wear restraints. We had an inmate give birth in a hospital under armed guard, one of her legs shackled to the bed. And so it goes....

 

It can be. But this country went through quite a transformation in the 1980s, with politicians deciding to top each other in "getting tough on crime." They saw prisons as to comfortable, and some free Americans actually thought inmates had it good. Amazing. And dumb. But the results were things like 3-strike laws, tougher sentencing on drug offenders, etc. A lot of that didn't really serve society, but it got people elected.

As a social scientist, I can't help but think this mentality eventually allowed us to tolerate torture, which we did.

 

Which state was this? I know many states, including my most recent state, Pennsylvania, pay inmates a few cents per hour. However, when it comes to juvenile offenders in state controlled placement facilities, they earn the state employee minimum wage, which I understand was $12/hr in 2018.

 

There was recently a Department of Education grant initiative that allowed qualified institutions to offer college programs to inmates, with the inmates being allowed to use Pell grants to fund the programs. It's a limited trial to provide further data for a push to once again, help correctional institutions reform individuals with education and for incarcerated individuals to once again be qualified for Pell grants. There's quite a number of studies out there showing that each dollar spent on correctional education, has a staggering return for the taxpayer (via reduced recidivism) and significant positive effect for society.

 

Indeed. For those not familiar, look into Correctional Enterprises. They have partnered with prison/correctional state departments and lobby for state legislation to allow them to hire and run prison manufacturing facilities with inmate labor, paying far below minimum wage. Their work around is that they limit customers to only being state government, Federal government, municipal government, education, and non-profits. They've partnered with many state prison systems.

 

Believe Rich is referring to a true traditional work release. If an inmate receives permission to leave prison to go work for BOBS XYZ Construction, they are generally required to be paid at least minimum wage in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act. However those positions are uncommon in comparison to inmates working on behalf of the prison or for prison/industry partnerships, as mentioned above, who are often exempt from the FLSA. There's also some fascinating convoluted concepts with the usage of archaic sentencing language that reference the legal term hard labor.

 

I've seen this and really enjoyed it. I can't remember if it's mentioned in the documentary or if I learned about it from Google after, but I've been following the work of the College Guild since. https://www.collegeguild.org/ They provide free, non-accredited correspondence courses with volunteer graders. While they can't give course credit like Bard can, they help expander prisoner's minds and remind them of a society outside prison walls that they can be a participant in.

 

Nevada and DC.

If they're working inside the prison for the prison, yes, less than a dollar per hour is common. But if they're working for an employer--even one inside the prison, minimum wage laws apply.

 

I worked in a prison as a correction officer for two and half years, one of the worst actually Rikers Island. We had continuing education programs but did not offer college degrees. Depending on the state prison you went to upon sentencing I believe they are afforded online degree programs through a SUNY college grant.

 

California actually has several state colleges that go to the prisons and inmates can earn Bachelor's degrees. I know Fresno state is one of the partners. In California we have a huge educational focus. In fact some of our government leaders went to I believe either Sweden or another country and now we have funds going to make our prison system more like theirs (see most recent CA budget for additional information) we also have a massive substance abuse program but yea not all prison systems are behind the educational times.