A Second Chance Offers Powerful Possibilities

Sunday marked one year since Michael Brown, an 18-year-old
black man, was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
The controversial circumstances surrounding the shooting sparked protests and
civil unrest across the nation, which have catalyzed vigorous debate and
introspection about the relationship between African Americans and law
enforcement in the United States. To a lesser but related extent, it has also brought
the issues of race and concentrated poverty to the forefront of public
dialogue.

Connecting these threads, The Century Foundation,
a think tank based in Washington D.C., released a new paper this week, looking
at how unrest has played out in high-poverty,
inner-ring suburbs like Ferguson. Since 2000, the number of people living
in concentrated poverty has doubled, increasing from 7.2 million to 13.8
million with more children living in deprived communities than adults. While
the report productively engages a variety of policies to address the problems
of concentrated poverty, there’s another important and related policy dimension
to consider: how to support the re-entry of criminal offenders back into their
communities after their release. Ex-offenders are often concentrated in similarly
high-poverty and segregated minority neighborhoods and the process of transitioning
back into these already-vulnerable areas can be a challenge for individuals,
families, and communities alike.

But what if inmates could use their time behind bars to gain
valuable skills and credentials that would help them get jobs and make them economic
and social assets to struggling communities when they leave prison?

But there is solid evidence that access to correctional education helps prisoners succeed on the outside. 

It is often said that prison is where criminals go to learn
how to be better criminals. In the absence of other educational opportunities,
that’s not terribly surprising. But there is solid evidence that access to
correctional education helps prisoners succeed on the outside. According to a
2013 study from the RAND Corporation,
prisoners who participated in correctional education programs were 43 percent
less likely to return to prison within three years of release than prisoners
who did not participate in these programs; and their chances of finding
employment were between 13 to 28 percent higher.

The Obama Administration has connected these dots of race,
concentrated poverty, and prison education policy and recently announced the Second
Chance Pell Pilot program. The pilot will provide Pell Grants to a limited
number of incarcerated students on an experimental basis to cover the costs of
pursuing postsecondary education and training. Since the passage of the Violent
Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, federal and state prisoners have
been ineligible for these funds. Former U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
(R-TX), who introduced
the amendment that banned prisoners from receiving Pell Grants, argued on the
Senate floor for the measure on the basis of fairness: “Because prisoners have
zero income, they have been able to step to the front of the line and push
law-abiding citizens out of the way…It is not fair to taxpayers. It is not fair
to law-abiding citizens. It is not fair to the victims of crime,”
 she declared.

Because many ex-offenders are concentrated in poor and minority neighborhoods, improving the earnings and employability prospects of ex-offenders could have a positive impact on these communities.  

While federal law still prohibits providing Pell Grants to
prisons, and only Congress can change that, the Obama Administration has some
flexibility to provide funds to a limited number of prisoners for research purposes. And
with the Second Chance Pell Pilot, President Obama is putting that flexibility
to good use. Because many ex-offenders are concentrated in poor and minority
neighborhoods, improving the earnings and employability prospects of
ex-offenders could have a positive impact on these communities.

This pilot program comes at a time of renewed interest in
exploring the potential of correctional education programs to facilitate
re-entry efforts and to reduce the rate of recidivism. While funding for
correctional education programs have been slashed in the past two decades, our
prison population has grown precipitously. Indeed, America’s prison population
dwarfs that of other nations with some 2.2
million people currently incarcerated.

At the same time, this outsized population has extremely low
levels of educational
attainment. In federal prison, 40 percent of inmates have no high school
diploma and a mere 16 percent of prisoners in state facilities have graduated
high school or received an equivalent credential. Without credentials, finding family-sustaining
employment on the outside can be a major strain, the effects of which are
rarely confined to the former inmate. Instead, they become a burden felt
throughout the community via increased rates of unemployment, poverty, and,
ultimately, more crime.

But investing in education also holds the potential for
positive ripple effects, especially for inmates with young children. Without
access to several forms of public assistance, the economic stakes are high for
the families of former inmates. If prisoners are able to use their time in jail
productively to earn a postsecondary degree, they will be in a better position
to support their families post-release at a time when all families are
struggling with a rising
cost of living for households. There are also intangible benefits: the
experience of earning a postsecondary degree could begin a family tradition of
attending college. Research shows that children raised by parents with college
degrees are significantly more
likely to be encouraged to attend college than children raised by parents
who did not.

Correctional education also promises to benefit
communities by increasing ex-offenders’ earning potential and likelihood of
civic participation, both of which will contribute to stimulating the local
economy and improving housing conditions. Critics of the plan will say that we
can’t afford it. The Pell Grant program is already stretched thin, this line of
argument goes, and if we are going to expand access to it, it should be for
students who haven’t committed crimes. But how much is it costing us every time
an individual, having repaid their debt to society, returns home only to
discover they cannot get a job? According to the Rand Study, for every dollar
invested in education programs for incarcerated students, four to five dollars
are saved on three year re-incarceration costs.

It’s easy to get caught up in arguments about what’s fair or
who is more deserving. But with a rising number of people living in
high-poverty neighborhoods and the largest prison population in the developed
world, these arguments are self-defeating for U.S. policymakers. Withholding
educational opportunities to prisoners only sets them up for failure when they
return to society. When it comes to today’s ex-offenders, many are in need of a
second chance –to get their lives on track, to build a stable future for their
families, and to become economically and socially thriving citizens who
contributes to their communities.

Mary Alice McCarthy is a senior policy analyst
with the Higher Education Initiative at New America. Patricia Hart is a program
associate in the Asset Building Program at New America.