Almost 2 million people in the United States are currently incarcerated. Sixty-nine percent of incarcerated adults in prisons report being interested in enrolling in a postsecondary program, to increase their knowledge or skills on a subject and to increase the possibilities of employment upon release. However, facing negative stigma attributed to incarcerated people, prison and jail educational programs are under scrutiny. As a community, we need to overcome harmful stereotypes that exclude incarcerated people from education and recognize that accessible education is a path to personal growth and stability.
The road to incarceration begins at the school-to-prison pipeline, which refers to schools taking punitive disciplinary action against at-risk youth. Inadequate educational support and zero-tolerance policies have caused greater expulsion rates, disproportionately affecting students of color and students with disabilities. Pushing students out of educational spaces has long-term impacts, such as reduced educational opportunities and greater youth criminalization.
“Education (can) … provide a stabilizing future that allows people to not only rehabilitate or reintegrate into society (but) to make phenomenal decisions for their own lives,” said Denise Hernández, judge in Travis County and in the Transformative Youth Justice program.
The youth justice program is a data-driven, community-centered program that provides mentorship, wellness and educational support to youth ages 17 to 20. The program collaborates with community partners such as UT’s School of Social Work and Dell Medical School to provide resources to participants impacted by the justice system.
UT currently facilitates one of only 406 higher education prison programs in the U.S. The Texas Prison Education Initiative at UT is a volunteer program that offers free college-credit-bearing classes to incarcerated people in Central Texas. Faculty and graduate students instruct courses on subjects such as math, rhetoric, creative writing and urban studies.
“They tend to be very well motivated and hardworking students,” said Miriam Schoenfield, director of the program.
Despite the initiatives aimed to provide the same benefits and opportunities offered to students on campus to incarcerated students, people still don’t view incarcerated students in the program as part of the UT community. This stems from stigma dehumanizing incarcerated people and characterizing them as violent and unfeeling offenders.
This stigma is what reduces support for rehabilitation initiatives and pushes for punitive policies. Instead of calling for increased punishment, we need to end this stigma and provide incarcerated people with the opportunities to break away from cycles of incarceration.
“The correctional environment needs to be used as a space for addressing the needs that people are walking into prison and jail with,” said Alycia Welch, associate director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the LBJ School.
UT’s prison education program not only offers a curriculum for students to complete postsecondary degree programs, but it also emphasizes the shared passion for education that incarcerated students and instructors share. Students should make the effort to recognize incarcerated students as fellow members of UT, as they hold the same degree regardless of their background. By inviting incarcerated students seeking personal growth into our academic community, students can help keep these programs funded and motivate more incarcerated people to participate in the future.
“We leave, to whatever extent we can, the ideology of incarceration (behind) and (use educational programs as) an opportunity to be together, study ideas and learn together as part of university studies,” Schoenfield said.
To have a safe and healthy society, accessible education shouldn’t have to be delegated, it should be promised. Regardless of students’ backgrounds, they’re Longhorns because of their pursuit of personal growth through education.
Williams is a psychology freshman from Richmond, TX.
