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The Daily Yonder Federal Funding for Incarcerated Students Returns to Rural Colleges After Two Decades Comprehensive and practical in-prison education is often a bridge to employment on the outside and a means of achieving lower rates of recidivism. Share this: Back in 2015, President Obama created the Second Chance Pell Grant Pilot Program, which selected higher ed institutions around the country to implement higher education programs in prisons within their service area. In this photograph, Barack Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan, center, speaks with inmates Alphonso Coates...

The title of this post is the headline of this new New Yorker‎ commentary authored by Clint Smith. Here are excerpts: Last Thursday, the Obama Administration selected sixty-seven colleges and universities across twenty-seven states to participate in the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program, which aims to “create a fairer, more effective criminal justice system, reduce recidivism, and combat the impact of mass incarceration on communities.”  The new initiative could make Pell Grants available to as many as twelve thousand people behind bars. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr., made s...

The quoted portion title of this post is the headline of this recent New York Times commentary authored by Elizabeth Hinton.  Here are excerpts (with a little commentary at the end from me): Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities. Instead of languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry — just like college students.  Or even with them. This would be a boon to prisoners across the country, a vast majority of whom do not have a high school diploma. And it could help shrink our prison population. While racial disp...