College Inside

From prison tablets to Cleveland kitchens

Charlotte West — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:26:57 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about employment and education during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here are the highlights:

EDWINS, a Cleveland-based culinary training program focused on formerly incarcerated people, has expanded its program with a 34-hour digital curriculum available on prison tablets. It’s the latest expansion of a program that has spent nearly 15 years making the case that culinary training can be a path out of incarceration. This story was copublished with our local partner, Signal Ohio.

EDWINS operates a bakery and butcher shop that also train formerly incarcerated people to work in the culinary industry. Charlotte West/Open Campus

EDWINS built a reentry program in Cleveland. It’s expanded its renowned culinary training nationwide.

Drew Hanchett has always loved to cook. So when he found a culinary curriculum on his tablet while sitting in a cot in a county jail in Tucson, Arizona — videos on French knife skills, sauces, butchery — he worked through all of it. "I was so happy to find a course on something I was already passionate about," he said.

Hanchett had no idea that, more than a year later, completing that curriculum would land him in Cleveland, enrolled in an in-person culinary training program. Hanchett is one of about 120 people EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute has flown to Cleveland after completing the program's tablet-based curriculum. The course is now available through Edovo, an educational app available on prison tablets in almost every state.

The digital content is the latest expansion of a program that has spent nearly 15 years making the case that culinary training — paired with housing, jobs and wraparound support — can be a path out of incarceration.

Those like Hanchette who complete the digital course and want to pursue the in-person training can apply to come to Cleveland, with flights sponsored by the Cleveland Browns football team.

The program is the brainchild of Brandon Chrostowski, a Detroit native who was arrested as a teenager, got probation instead of prison time, and was mentored by a chef whom he credits with changing the course of his life. He spent years cooking in New York, Chicago and Paris before settling in Cleveland — which he chose, he has said, because the data pointed to it as one of the most distressed cities in the country.

"There's a way to change the world through food and hospitality," he said, "because it changed mine."

EDWINS started as a culinary class at Grafton Correctional Institution, a men's minimum security prison, in 2011. It eventually became what it is today, a community hub in Cleveland's Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood — a butcher shop, a bakery, a culinary library, student housing, and a French restaurant that recently reopened in the old Nighttown location in Cleveland Heights. Around 1,000 students have graduated since the program started, according to program staff. The program was also the subject of Knife Skills, a 2018 Oscar-nominated documentary available free on YouTube.

During the pandemic, electronic tablets became more common in prisons across the country. They aren't connected to the internet, but allow incarcerated people to message friends and family and access approved entertainment and educational content. The EDWINS tablet curriculum introduces people inside to the fundamentals of French cooking through videos, reading assignments and tests. "It's giving people a good foundation on how to cook, what to cook, how to visualize it," Chrostowski said.

Hanchett, who already had experience as a home cook, learned things like how to make fresh pasta. "I wrote all the recipes down,” he said. “But what it did most was set me up for what they taught in person — how they make their recipes. I already knew how they did it and why."

Photo courtesy Drew Hanchett

Hanchett arrived in Ohio in January and is due to graduate in August. When he got to Cleveland, he kept waiting for a catch. It never came. The in-person program confirmed something he had always wondered about himself — he had been a home cook for years, praised by everyone around him, but never knew if they were just being nice. EDWINS, he said, answered that question. He's planning to stay and work in Ohio after graduation.

Hanchett's experience is part of what Derrick Speights, EDWINS' director of reentry services, has come to expect from students who travel to Cleveland for the program. He spoke during a tour of the bakery and butcher shop at the National Conference for Higher Education in Prison in April.

"The people that I fly here usually don't have a whole lot of problems," he said. Fewer distractions, less pull from their old lives.

"Every piece — the butcher shop, the bakery, the library — all of this is based off a student's need," Speights said. "Brandon has always said, 'If one student needs it, every student needs it.'"

Speights puts the job placement rate of EDWINS graduates at 95%. Some graduates go on to work in top restaurants in Cleveland, though not everyone ends up working in the restaurant industry — and Speights says that’s fine.

“Culinary arts might just be a safety net for you,” he said. “Times get hard, you get laid off, you run into a restaurant, you make your money. That’s OK with us. The goal is that you don’t go back to prison.”

Read the full story.

News & views

A new Prison Policy Initiative briefing examines the 17 states (plus D.C.) that have eliminated discretionary parole and finds their alternative release mechanisms, including earned and good time policies, are universally underutilized for getting people out earlier, particularly in states with strict truth-in-sentencing laws. The briefing builds on PPI's earlier report that we covered on how parole boards treat education, which found that achievements like degrees are often discounted in release decisions.

Wisconsin's prison population is approaching a record high, with women's facilities now running at 178% of capacity, according to a new tracker from our local partner Wisconsin Watch. The piece notes that overcrowding and staffing shortages mean prisons scale back vocational training and higher education to focus on the basics — even though, as one formerly incarcerated source put it, more than 90% of Wisconsin's prisoners will eventually be released.

Let’s connect

Please connect if you have story ideas or just want to share your experience with prison education programs as a student or educator. You can always reach me at charlotte@opencampusmedia.org or on Bluesky, LinkedIn, or Instagram. To reach me via snail mail, you can write to: Open Campus, 2460 17th Avenue #1015, Santa Cruz, CA 95062.

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The Magic of Gathering in Prison

Charlotte West — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:30:00 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about education and employment during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here’s what you need to know:

This week, Charlotte West talks to Constance Steinkuehler, a researcher at University of California Irvine who studies the cognitive and social aspects of gaming. They discuss why game tables may be among the few places in prison where racial divisions begin to break down.
Our Q&A with Reiko Hillyer, a historian at Lewis & Clark College, about a new documentary about the Inside-Out program was co-published with Slate.
Check out our latest print issue of College Inside focused on Illinois, produced in partnership with our partner WBEZ’s Prisoncast!.

Photo by Clint Bustrillos on Unsplash

In January 2026, the Illinois Department of Corrections issued a memo about Magic: The Gathering, a collectible fantasy card game. The rules were specific: no more than 500 cards per person, cards must fit in personal property boxes, and no protective sleeves or cases were allowed. But aside from the rules governing the possession of cards, the memo also noted, in its opening line, that the department recognized the game’s “mental-health and social benefits” and its “positive contribution to a facility environment.”

It was a formal acknowledgment of something incarcerated people have long known: games are not only a way to pass the time, but a way to build relationships. And educators and researchers are also increasingly viewing games as more than recreation. Like the prison classroom, game tables can create low-stakes environments where people learn to navigate challenges, build relationships, and work through disagreement. In places where prison life remains deeply segregated along racial lines, they can also bring together people who might otherwise never interact.

That potential reaches people who may carry years of negative experiences with school and learning. Many incarcerated people have limited educational attainment. In California, people in prison read at an eighth-grade level on average and have sixth-grade math skills, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Prisons in the United States are also deeply racially segregated. Incarcerated people are often sorted by race from the moment they arrive, assigned to housing along color lines enforced by both formal policy and the unwritten codes that govern life inside. People self-segregate too — at meals, on the yard, in the cells. The game table, along with the prison classroom, is one of the few spaces where those rules don’t apply.

San Quentin SkunkWorks, a nonprofit led by currently and formerly incarcerated people at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in California, started from a simple observation. In a facility where showers, dining tables, and yard space were all racially segregated, the game tables weren’t. The organization built a formal program around that insight — what they call “transformative recreation.” Once a month, the gym opens for a half-day of tabletop and digital games, open to anyone who wants to play, with one rule: you play with whoever is there. Demand for the program significantly outweighs the number of available seats, organizers said during a recent webinar.

The connections made during game play extend beyond the game table. SkunkWorks organizers have observed men who met playing chess or Dungeons & Dragons later choosing each other as cellmates, across racial lines — something that would be, as one organizer put it, unthinkable in most prisons.

Constance Steinkuehler, a professor of informatics at University of California Irvine who has spent her career studying the cognitive and social benefits of games, first heard about the program through a stream of handwritten letters from incarcerated members of SkunkWorks who had tracked her down through an academic database. They asked for her help. She visited San Quentin to see what they were doing for herself and is now helping the team design and conduct a rigorous academic study of the program’s impact. The research is being conducted in part by incarcerated members of the organization, whom Steinkuehler has been training in survey methodology and study design through a correspondence course conducted largely by mail. As a result of her experience at San Quentin, she also started teaching inside a prison in Southern California as part of UC Irvine’s prison education program.

The study is designed to measure whether attending the gaming program reduces intergroup anxiety — the unease people feel around those from different racial or social groups — and increases feelings of social connection. Participants are randomly selected from a pool of sign-ups, allowing researchers to compare those who attended with those who are still waiting to get in. Early findings, based on a preliminary survey, are promising: participants report feeling less anxious around people from other groups after attending, and more connected to others in the facility. Steinkuehler is also tracking whether those effects persist over time and whether they extend into daily life at San Quentin.

San Quentin Rehabilitation Center outside of San Francisco. Photo: Charlotte West/Open Campus

Steinkuehler has a theory about why: Games meet people where they are. The challenge is built into the structure, and the consequences of losing are contained. “No one’s there evaluating you, no one’s judging,” she said.

That’s not a small thing for people who often carry what Steinkuehler calls “damaging messaging” about formal education — the idea, absorbed young and rarely questioned, that they are not learners. In her own research on game-based learning, she has found that struggling readers will work through their own comprehension problems on the fly when they are reading something they actually care about. The same principle applies at the game table. People push through difficult problems because they want to see what happens next.

But the benefits of gaming may extend beyond individual learning. Steinkuehler argues that games also build interpersonal skills that translate beyond the game table. She describes watching incarcerated people get frustrated during a game — and then laugh it off, repair the moment, and move on. That friction and repair, witnessed by everyone at the table, is how trust actually gets built. “Trust doesn’t emerge from no conflict,” she said. “Trust emerges from these everyday frictions and repairs, where you realize you can sort of have a different opinion from someone, and still you can get along.”

Steinkuehler got to test that theory firsthand when she taught a sociology of games class at Donovan Prison in Southern California as part of UC Irvine’s prison education program. She had the men play games during class while others took ethnographic field notes — then used those observations as the basis for assignments, asking students to analyze what they saw using the social theory they were reading. The assignments were sharp. But when the course evaluations came back, most of the long responses weren’t about the coursework at all. They were about what it felt like to sit at a table in prison and feel safe. “I had students that wrote…that they hadn’t had that feeling since they had walked inside the prison doors,” Steinkuehler said.

The prison classroom, it turns out, works similarly. A 2025 study by UC Berkeley researchers found that students in a college program at San Quentin reported more cross-racial friendships and more positive racial attitudes the longer they were enrolled. Like the game table, the classroom offers what the researchers called a “contrasting context”: a space where the racial codes governing the rest of prison life are, at least temporarily, suspended.

Nowhere are those racial codes more entrenched — and the absence of formal programming more stark — than on death row. Keri Blakinger, an investigative journalist who spent years reporting a Pulitzer-nominated story on Dungeons & Dragons on Texas death row, found that men in near-total isolation were forging genuine friendships across racial lines through a game involving wizards and orcs.

In her reporting, Blakinger found that D&D games on death row brought together men who would never have associated otherwise. “Even in prisons where social groups tended to be racially segregated, D&D games often brought together different races,” she said.

Tony Ford, one of the men she followed most closely, was the only Black man playing with a group of Mexican Mafia members when he first got involved in the game in the 1990s. Years later, his closest friend on death row — a white man from deep East Texas named Billy Wardlow — came to the game as the only white player in a group of Black men. Ford told Blakinger that death row is less racially segregated now than it once was. Back then, he said, that kind of integration was a big deal.

The game was also doing something that no formal program on death row did — because there were none. Men sentenced to death in Texas receive none of the educational or mental health programming available to the general prison population. For Ford and Wardlow’s group, D&D became, as Blakinger put it, their “life-skills course, anger-management class and drug counseling” rolled into one. Players would sometimes create characters whose struggles mirrored their own — a character who drank too much, or used drugs — and other players would stage an in-game intervention. “Sometimes that intervention turns real,” Blakinger said, “and they start sharing real-life concerns with their friend who’s struggling.”

Blakinger puts it simply. Men in long-term solitary confinement rarely get to practice the most basic social skills, such as working together or resolving differences. “If you spend all your time in isolation, you can potentially avoid compromising or taking other people’s needs into consideration nearly all the time if you want,” she said. “If you’re engaging in a sustained group activity together, that’s not possible anymore.”

Let’s connect

Interested in reaching people who care about higher education in prisons? Get in touch at sales@opencampusmedia.org or request our media kit.

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How lived experience meets academic knowledge in a prison classroom

Charlotte West — Tue, 26 May 2026 16:07:05 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about the future of postsecondary education in prisons. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Classroom 4 is a documentary on the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program at Lewis & Clark College held at a men’s prison in Oregon. Photo courtesy of Lewis & Clark College

A Q&A with Reiko Hillyer: ‘You represent us’

On the first day of class, professor Reiko Hillyer writes a quote from the French philosopher Michel Foucault on the board: "Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?"

The students in the room have a lot to say about that topic. The class includes undergraduates from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. and incarcerated students — they're meeting inside Columbia River Correctional Institution, a minimum security prison, for a course on the history of crime and punishment in the United States. It's part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, an international organization that facilitates college courses taught inside prisons, with half the seats filled by incarcerated students and half by students from outside.

Hillyer, a historian at Lewis & Clark, has been teaching inside since 2012, and wrote about the experience in her 2024 book, A Wall Is Just a Wall, published by Duke University Press. A documentary about the class, Classroom 4, directed by her childhood friend Eden Wurmfeld, is now streaming on PBS. I spoke with Hillyer about what the Inside-Out model makes possible, and what her incarcerated students said when they saw the film.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Charlotte West: You open the class with a quote. What does that discussion reveal about what the Inside-Out model makes possible?

Reiko Hillyer: It's the purest demonstration of what it means to bring together subjective lived experience and academic knowledge. Outside students from a liberal arts college are practiced in abstract analytical thinking — how institutions are made, what purpose they serve, for whom. Inside students have the wisdom of their own lives. In that conversation you have both happening at the same time. An inside student might say that prisons in Eastern Oregon used to be mental institutions and army barracks; an outside student might speak about modernity and the need for discipline and control under capitalism. The lived experience verifies the theoretical, and the theoretical gives those with lived experience tools to understand their own lives.

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program facilitates college courses taught inside prisons, with half the seats filled by incarcerated students and half by students from nearby colleges. Photo courtesy of Lewis & Clark College

You've said that part of what you're doing in the class is denaturalizing what we take for granted. What do you mean by that?

Prison is one of the most taken-for-granted institutions. We take it for granted just like we take school for granted. But these are all human decisions that emerge out of particular histories, made by people who had the power to make them. The people who are inside prisons naturalize them as much as people on the outside. My job as a historian, regardless of the topic, is to denaturalize what we take for granted. When it comes to prisons, there is very serious harm done by our unquestioned acceptance of carcerality and punishment as the main way of dealing with social transgression. People who are incarcerated have been made invisible, and these are generally public institutions with no transparency at all. When you meet someone who is incarcerated and hold a conversation with them, no matter who, that conversation will probably disarm you and make you wonder: does this person need to be in exile for the rest of their life?

How did you get started with Inside-Out?

My subject area is U.S. history — the built environment, public memory, the American South, and more recently the history of mass incarceration. Around 2010 or 2011, a colleague told me about the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and said the training might really benefit me. It was the best thing I had ever done. The training involved participation and coaching by people who were incarcerated at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania — many of them juvenile lifers. After that, I figured out how to start a class at Lewis & Clark, where I was a visiting instructor. I already had a relationship with Columbia River as a yoga teacher, so I felt comfortable reaching out to the superintendent to propose it. I launched the first class in 2012 not knowing if I'd ever get to do it again. I didn't even have a permanent job at Lewis & Clark, but I thought, if this is something I only get to do once, it's worth it.

Students in Reiko Hillyer's Inside-Out course at Columbia River Correctional Institution engage in a discussion. The class brings together undergraduates from Lewis & Clark College and incarcerated students to study the history of crime and punishment in the United States. Photo courtesy of Lewis & Clark College.

How did the documentary come about?

The director, Eden Wurmfeld, has been my best friend since we were 12 years old. She's been a filmmaker for a long time, and I think in the back of her mind she always had a hope that there would be an occasion to capture this somehow. As a historian, especially with the political climate right now, I felt that this needed to be documented, that this needed to be recorded — that people on the outside who may never get to take a class like this need to see the folks on the inside. Getting cameras in was challenging just on a logistical level; every single piece of equipment had to be recorded on an inventory list and checked both going in and going out. But my liaison at the prison was a tremendous advocate for the class, and took a professional risk, I believe, to say yes to the cameras.

What was the reaction when you screened the film inside?

I screened it at Columbia River and twice at Oregon State Penitentiary — once for the lifers group, once for the Asian Pacific Family Club. Some of those people have been serving sentences of 37, 41, 60 years. They were so appreciative — not just of the Inside-Out class, but because the film had played in Aspen and DC and all over the country, to audiences who might not have even gone to see it specifically. What they said, over and over again, was: you're representing us. The guys in the film are all of us. You've made it clear that we're not the monsters people think we are.

What have some of the students who appear in the film gone on to do?

Nick Five Oaks, who features quite prominently, has been out about two years and was able to fly to Aspen for the world premiere and be part of the Q&A panel. And James, who speaks at the end of the film about his inner child being released from its box — after that one class, he was turned on to education, having really not had a great relationship with the formal education system for most of his life. He took every single Inside-Out class that was offered after that, before he got released, and even served as a teaching assistant for me the next time I taught.

Nick Five Oaks, who features quite prominently in Classroom 4, has been released and was able to attend the world premiere of the documentary at the Aspen Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Lewis & Clark College

How has teaching inside shaped your research?

It made me start asking: ‘has it always been this way?’ I was spending time with people who were incarcerated and feeling their isolation — one person at Oregon State Penitentiary told me the best thing about transferring to Columbia River was that he could see trees for the first time in 20 years. So I started researching a specific prison, the Virginia State Penitentiary, because their archives had just opened. And I started finding executive orders for clemencies, for furloughs — people leaving at Christmas for 10 days and coming back. I found a document releasing people convicted of first-degree murder so they could give a talk at a Masonic lodge, or play chess at a high school tournament. In the late 1960s in Virginia. I was amazed. Something that surprises you is going to be an interesting story.

Let’s connect

Interested in reaching people who care about higher education in prisons? Get in touch at sales@opencampusmedia.org or request our media kit.

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A message of hope and activism from Sister Prejean

Charlotte West — Wed, 06 May 2026 18:12:48 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about employment and education during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here are the highlights:

Sister Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, spends her birthday at DePaul University every April. Listen to WBEZ’s interview with the 87-year-old nun.
A new report from the Sentencing Project documents what reentry looks like for people who have spent decades behind bars.
A story from our local partner Wisconsin Watch looks at why few Wisconsin businesses use “second chance” bonds.

_{Sister Prejean celebrates 15 years since Illinois abolished capital punishment}

Sister Helen Prejean, the author of “Dead Man Walking,” visited DePaul University on Friday, April 24, 2026, to mark the 15th anniversary of Illinois abolishing the death penalty. Manuel Martinez/WBEZ

The tulips, Sister Helen Prejean jokes, bloom for her birthday.

The nun and death penalty abolitionist turned 87 in April. Every year, she spends her birthday in Chicago at DePaul University, where she donated her personal archives in 2011: nearly 45 years of journals, letters, speeches and notes from her work to end capital punishment.

That work brought her to campus for an event marking the 15th anniversary of Illinois abolishing the death penalty. In previous years, she has also gone inside correctional facilities alongside students, including for a book club at Cook County Jail.

“When you bring students inside to actually meet real prisoners, they meet human beings,” Prejean told WBEZ. “Where human beings encounter real human beings, we both change.”

For DePaul and other colleges that see social justice as part of their educational mission, that kind of engagement — sending faculty and students inside prison walls while also bringing people who are incarcerated into academic conversations — is central to how they educate students.

Read the full story.

A new report about 'learning life all over again' during reentry

A new report from the Sentencing Project documents what reentry looks like for people who have spent decades behind bars — and the picture is largely one of systems that failed them at every turn.

The report, published in April, is based on interviews with 33 people from seven states who served between 20 and 43 years in prison before being released between 2021 and 2024. The Sentencing Project, which does significant research and advocacy around extreme sentences, interviewed participants about their experiences inside, during the transition home, and in the months after release. The report's title comes from something one participant said when asked what would have helped them prepare to come home: learning life all over again.

Eight in ten participants said they faced long waitlists or were outright excluded from programming — including GED classes, college courses, and vocational training — because of their sentence length. Eighty-five percent of participants were 25 or younger when sentenced, the developmental window when people are most open to rehabilitation; and that's precisely when programming was denied or delayed. Without tailored programming and social support networks, the authors found, people returning after long-term incarceration are at a significant disadvantage from the start.

Open Campus and WBEZ Chicago have documented this pattern in Illinois, where Juan Hernandez spent 18 years fighting bureaucratic barriers just to get his GED — and is still waiting to get into college. State data published last fall showed that for every person enrolled in a college program in an Illinois prison, another sits on a waitlist — with average waits of 1.3 years statewide, and nearly five years at the state's main women's prison.

The report doesn't capture whether participants who accessed formal education fared better post-release — the sample is too small and the study wasn't designed to measure that. But participants who fought their way into peer-led groups and self-help programming described those experiences as central to their reentry readiness, even when formal programs were out of reach.

The publication also documents what people come home to after decades inside: a digital world they weren't prepared for, no valid ID, little to no gate money, vocational certifications that aren't recognized by outside employers, and parole restrictions that can block job travel and family visits. Based on a self-reported measure of well-being, around 45% of participants described themselves as “thriving” at the time of their interviews. But more than half were “surviving” or “struggling.”

This is a population we've been watching as sentencing reforms bring more people home after extreme sentences. The Sentencing Project recommends that all imprisoned people have access to programming from day one, regardless of sentence length, and that gate money be raised to cover at least two weeks of expenses. It also calls for restoring the federal reentry funding the Trump administration cut in 2025.

‘Second chance’ bonds show promise. Few Wisconsin businesses use them.

For every 10 people released from Wisconsin’s prisons, just seven find jobs within two years — even as the state’s ongoing worker shortage leaves many employers scrambling to find the help they need.

The struggle isn’t unique to Wisconsin. Formerly incarcerated people nationwide are far more likely to be unemployed than the general population. One reason: Though people with criminal records often outperform their colleagues, many employers worry they’ll be unreliable or even dangerous.

That’s why, 60 years ago, the U.S. government began insuring employers against that risk, for free.

The Federal Bonding Program, established in 1966, offers “fidelity bonds” to reimburse businesses for losses if the covered employee steals or commits fraud.

Recent research suggests these bonds are one of the most effective ways the government can persuade employers to give jobs to people with criminal records. Those jobs have ripple effects. Families become more financially stable, communities become safer — as people with jobs are less likely to commit new crimes — and taxpayers save money as fewer people return to prison.

So why aren’t Wisconsin employers requesting these bonds? While some states issued hundreds last year, Wisconsin issued just three — even though an estimated 1.4 million Wisconsinites have a criminal record.

Demand in the state is so low that when the federal government in 2019 offered Wisconsin $100,000 to spend on bonds, workforce officials used just $15,000.

To figure out what’s going on, Wisconsin Watch spoke to economists, insurance experts, criminologists and workforce development officials, who ranged from enthusiastic to cynical about bonding.

Read the full story from our local partner Wisconsin Watch.

Let’s connect

Interested in reaching people who care about higher education in prisons? Get in touch at sales@opencampusmedia.org or request our media kit.

For those with a record, 'checking the box' can be a barrier to education

Charlotte West — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:00:00 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about education and employment during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Mike Pierce, who is on work release in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections, is earning an online graduate degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

This month I'm reporting from Chicago, where I had the chance to collaborate with my colleagues at Prisoncast!, our local newsroom partner WBEZ's statewide radio show and journalism project made with and for people incarcerated in Illinois and their loved ones. Our story was part of a special two-hour Prisoncast! broadcast focused on education, which also includes reporting from the National Conference on Higher Education in Prison in Cleveland earlier this month.

The story, produced by Lauren Frost, looks at criminal history background checks in college admissions — a practice at roughly three out of four colleges and universities nationally, including 10 of Illinois' 12 public universities. The research shows that the campus safety justification universities typically offer isn't well-supported by evidence — and that simply having the question on an application discourages people from applying at all. A 2015 national study found that 60% of undergraduate students with criminal histories stopped filling out applications when they encountered the question.

Mike Pierce knows that feeling. Pierce earned his bachelor's degree while incarcerated at an Illinois state prison, and when he neared the end of his sentence he knew exactly what he wanted to do next: go to graduate school at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the same school whose professors taught him while he was inside.

But when he filled out his application, there was a surprise waiting at the end — a note asking anyone with a criminal history to contact an office on campus. What Pierce didn't know was that his disclosure would trigger a separate review by a committee that includes law enforcement, campus housing and representatives from the provost's office — a group that can recommend barring someone from admission, regardless of how academically qualified they are for their program.

The letter came on a Friday night, four days before Christmas.

"I was wearing a button-up shirt, black tie, getting ready to go serve and bus tables in a five-star restaurant," Pierce said. "I may have shed a few tears in a stairwell by myself when I read it."

The committee recommended his application be denied. He had 10 days to appeal.

Last month, the issue came up again after a shooting on the campus of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Virginia is one of a handful of states that bars public colleges from asking applicants about their criminal history — but that protection doesn't extend to enrolled students.

Days after a fatal shooting in which the gunman was a student with a prior conviction that had not been disclosed to the university, Old Dominion sent a two-question form to its roughly 24,000 students asking them to disclose their criminal histories. According to WHRO, the university said state law gave it the authority to do so — and the Virginian-Pilot reported that ODU declined to say how many students responded or what it plans to do with the information.

Read the full story at Open Campus, listen to the radio version on WBEZ, or hear the full Prisoncast! education episode.

Northwestern Prison Education Program holds first graduation since Stateville closure

Graduates of the Northwestern Prison Education Program attend a commencement ceremony inside Sheridan Correctional Center on Monday, April 13, 2026. The program graduated 22 incarcerated students this year. Photo by Heather Eidson courtesy of Northwestern University.

On April 13, the Northwestern Prison Education Program graduated its second class of 22 students — its first ceremony at Sheridan Correctional Center — as graduates received their bachelor’s degrees from Northwestern University.

The graduation came about a year and a half after the program relocated from Stateville Correctional Center, which a federal judge ordered emptied in August 2024 amid deteriorating conditions. Stateville had been home to several college programs, and the abrupt closure scattered students and programs across the state. Northwestern was able to move its program to Sheridan.

The ceremony drew a notable audience, including Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, Evanston Mayor and Daniel Biss, Illinois Department of Corrections Director Latoya Hughes, interim and emeritus president Henry Bienen, outgoing provost Kathleen Haggerty and provost-elect Erik Luijten, and featured a commencement address by Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative.

Stevenson, an attorney and law professor who has spent decades representing people on death row and challenging mass incarceration, directed his remarks squarely at the graduates. He told them that by earning a degree from a top university, they were “singing a new song” that the country needed to hear.

“Education is liberation and your freedom is what I want to celebrate this morning,” he said.

Each of the graduates delivered remarks at the ceremony. Two who had already been released also came back inside for the occasion, said Jennifer Lackey, the program’s founding director.

One graduate, Bryan “Ben Israel” Dean, told Open Campus that the journey from his first college class to walking across the stage took about 16 years. He almost walked away from the Northwestern program at one point when he was still at Stateville.

A friend he met through the program made him promise he would finish. When she walked up mid-interview Monday, Dean pointed to her. “She’s the one I thanked in my speech for not letting me quit,” he said. “Education has been the mechanism I’ve used to regain that humanity in myself.”

The program currently has five cohorts at Sheridan and is mid-way through admissions for a sixth, Lackey said. It also has students enrolled at Logan Correctional Center, which is also slated for closure. The program’s first cohort of women at Logan have completed their degrees, though their commencement has not yet been scheduled.

Read the full story.

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The HBCU president making the case for college in prison

Charlotte West — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:32:46 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about education and employment during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Greetings from Cleveland, where I'm attending the National Conference for Higher Education in Prison this week. On Friday, April 10 at 3 pm, I'll be on a panel about quality jobs during reentry with Jobs for the Future — informed by a joint survey we’re doing about people’s experiences with college and career during reentry. (And if you’re formerly incarcerated and you haven't taken the survey yet, we'd love to hear from you!)

Also this week: tune in this Sunday, April 12 to Prisoncast! — a special two-hour episode on WBEZ, our local partner newsroom, focused on education in Illinois prisons, airing from 2-4 pm central. The episode features a story I reported on the impact of criminal history disclosure on graduate admissions at Illinois universities.

Also check out this new documentary from Roadtrip Nation, now streaming on their website. I advised on the film, which features Open Campus writer Kun Lyna “K” Tauch and two other formerly incarcerated students navigating life after prison.

‘We are not entering foreign territory — we are extending our mission’

Stanley Andrisse, professor at Howard University; Ivan H. Allen, president of Central Georgia Technical College; Dwaun J. Warmack, president of Claflin University. Photo courtesy of Claflin University.

Historically Black colleges and universities have long served communities most impacted by mass incarceration — but they've been slow to enter the prison education space. A new initiative led by Claflin University President Dwaun J. Warmack and Howard University professor Stanley Andrisse, a formerly incarcerated scholar and national advocate, is trying to change that.

The HBCU Higher Education in Prison Initiative started in South Carolina, where five HBCUs are already operating prison education programs — the only such unified HBCU presence in the country, according to Warmack. The goal is to expand that model nationally, with a recruitment strategy built around getting college presidents personally on board.

The initiative is built on the conviction that this work doesn't take root without senior leadership driving it. When an HBCU president commits, the institution commits — and doors to partnerships, funding, and policy change open in ways they simply don't otherwise. "When presidents lead, programs have authority, visibility, and resources," Warmack said.

Andrisse frames the broader mission in similar terms. "When HBCUs step into the prison education space, we are not entering foreign territory — we are extending our mission," he said.

For Warmack, the work is also personal. "Members of my own family have lived this experience," he said. The moment it truly hit home was when the first incarcerated scholar from his program walked across the stage to receive his degree. "His degree didn't just change his life — it holds the potential to change the trajectory of his children's lives."

Read the full Q&A here.

The history of tech in Washington state prisons

Photo by Charlotte West for Open Campus.

In 1989, the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe became the first prison in the country to allow incarcerated people to own personal computers. The program had been running for three years — people learned skills, got jobs in tech, and barely anyone returned to prison. Then a new DOC director shut it down. And today, more than 35 years later, we're still debating whether people in prison should have meaningful access to technology at all.

That history is the subject of a recent blog post from the Washington Prison History Project. Written by Yael Eiger, a PhD student at the University of Washington who researches technology in the carceral system, it draws on a rich archive of documents to trace the history of computer access at the Washington State Reformatory — and a lot of it felt familiar.

The program grew out of frustration with what the prison's own education classes offered — outdated Radio Shack computers shared among multiple students, teaching skills that had little application in the real world. Incarcerated people at the reformatory spent two and a half years lobbying before the administration allowed them to buy their own machines with their own money.

Eiger's central argument is that technology in prison has consistently been framed as being for incarcerated people — workforce preparation, rehabilitation, digital literacy — while simultaneously serving institutional interests: cheap labor, surveillance, control. The benefits are real, but fragile. And the pattern repeats — from a 1967 IBM coding program at Arizona State Prison to what incarcerated people told us about their tablets in a survey we did a few years ago.

We've seen this dynamic much more recently too. In 2024, after an electrical engineer in Boston bought a secure prison laptop on eBay and tweeted about trying to crack it, state corrections officials collected all 1,200 secure laptops from incarcerated students statewide — even though no one inside had attempted anything. "An abundance of caution," officials said. Students eventually got their computers back, but lost access to their coursework in the meantime.

It's worth reading Eiger's whole post. She also writes about the archive's documentation of surveillance of political groups inside Washington prisons — history with a clear line to the AI tools now used to monitor and censor messages between incarcerated people and the outside world.

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An art course designed in prison

Charlotte West — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 22:19:22 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about education and employment during and after prison. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Incarcerated artist Christopher Levitt’s work on display at Blo Back Gallery in Pueblo, Colorado. Photo courtesy of Colorado State University Pueblo.

An incarcerated artist helped create a college art course — and a scholarship to pay for it

Christopher Levitt began making art in 2010, while serving a life sentence in the Michigan Department of Corrections. For years, he was largely self-taught, cut off from any real artistic community. In 2020, he began taking correspondence courses through Colorado State University Pueblo and asked his academic advisor whether he could get college credit for his years of artistic practice.

His advisor, Jessica Gama, wasn't sure — but she looked into it. The dean of Extended Studies approved a one-time independent study pairing Levitt with Meg Olsen, then a master's student in art education at CSU Pueblo. The two worked through the mail: Levitt completed assignments and sent them to the Extended Studies office, which photographed his work and forwarded it to Olsen. She sent feedback back through the same chain. It was slow, but it worked.

For Levitt, it was also transformative. "As years of confinement passed, art had become just something I did to pass the time, like playing solitaire, rather than how I expressed myself," he wrote in a letter. "I became excited about art again and eager to drink up all I could about art from Meg."

Christopher Levitt holds one of his paintings. Photo courtesy of Christopher Levitt.

The class caught the attention of others on campus. When his assignments began arriving, word spread, Levitt said. Faculty and students came to the Extended Studies office to see the work, and the dean proposed a student gallery show. But as Levitt prepared for the exhibit, he couldn't shake a feeling of sadness — knowing no other incarcerated student would have the same opportunity. So he wrote two proposals to the dean.

The first was for a formal correspondence drawing course, designed so that any incarcerated person could complete it regardless of what materials they had access to. The second proposed an auction of his artwork, with proceeds going to a scholarship fund for incarcerated students at CSU Pueblo. Both were approved in fall 2023.

Olsen wrote the curriculum, drawing heavily on the independent study she had done with Levitt. He helped her navigate the realities of the prison environment: what supplies students are actually allowed to have, how to structure assignments when someone might have limited materials, and what it means in practice to ask someone to draw another person.

"I had no concept of what the prisons allow and what they don't allow," Olsen said. "He can have paint brushes, and can order all sorts of supplies. Somebody in a different facility might only get a pencil and a scrap piece of paper."

The course was designed to work whether a student receives materials by mail or takes the class online, with assignments adapted accordingly. It is now part of CSU Pueblo's correspondence degree program, which is open to incarcerated students nationwide. Students can enroll in individual courses without pursuing a degree.

Most incarcerated students taking correspondence courses pay out of pocket. While Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students returned in 2023, no correspondence programs are known to have been approved to accept the federal financial aid. The approval process has to go through the federal Education Department as well as regional accreditation agencies. CSU Pueblo is working toward Pell eligibility for degree-seeking students in Colorado, but for now, students across the country who enroll in its program pay tuition themselves. Each academic credit costs $230, according to CSU Pueblo’s Extended Studies program.

The scholarship fund, named the Levitt Fund, began awarding money in fall 2024. It has raised a little over $8,000 since 2023, primarily through CSU Pueblo's annual Give Day and art show sales, and has awarded scholarships to three students so far. It is the only scholarship CSU Pueblo currently offers specifically for its incarcerated students. The fund's longer-term goal is to become an endowed scholarship to ensure sustainability, Gama said.

"Christopher is just a remarkable student and a remarkable artist — and very generous," Gama said. "He's always thinking not just about showing his artwork, but about how it could help support others."

It awards up to two scholarships per semester to degree-seeking students, worth up to $800 each — enough to cover a three-credit correspondence course and some materials. Students must be admitted to a degree program to be eligible for the scholarship. One scholarship is open to any subject area; the other is designated for art-related courses, a category Levitt wanted to expand to include creative writing to reach more students.

Christopher Levitt’s show at Blo Back Gallery in Pueblo, Colorado. Photo courtesy of Colorado State University Pueblo.

Levitt said the expansion was also intended to push back against the constraints many incarcerated students face.

“The prison system in America uses censorship and access to quiet and contain the voices and creativity of incarcerated persons,” he wrote. “By expanding access to art and writing, my hope is that more incarcerated persons will be able to see themselves as individuals who matter and have something to say.”

Levitt remains a student at CSU Pueblo. He also participates in the University of Michigan's Prison Creative Arts Project, an annual juried exhibition of work by incarcerated artists.

Levitt’s next show at Blo Back Gallery in Pueblo, Colorado, is scheduled for Friday, April 3, from 5 to 8 p.m. Proceeds will benefit the Levitt Fund. More information is available here.

Related:

News & views

Tracy Manning and Alicia Sims rehearse the play "Re-Entry" Feb. 24 at the IU Health Sciences Building in Indianapolis. Credit: Provided photo/Summit Performance Indianapolis

Our local partner Mirror Indy recently published a story on a new play centered on reentry and life after incarceration, based on interviews with 20 women in Indianapolis.

The performance brings those experiences to the stage, focusing on the challenges people face navigating housing, employment and relationships after release.

“People forget that these are not just folks we tuck away and never think about or talk about again,” director Morgan Morton told Mirror Indy. “We should be reframing things so that we really do think about them as our neighbors.”

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'If they ever open the door, watch what I can do'

Charlotte West — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:48:00 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about education and employment during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

David Carrillo spent three decades dreaming about getting out of prison. Here's what he's built after two years of freedom.

David Carrillo was released in January 2024 after receiving clemency from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. Photo courtesy of David Carrillo.

In January 2024, David Carrillo became one of the first incarcerated people in the country to teach a college-level course to other incarcerated people — and then, days later, walked out of a Colorado prison after Gov. Jared Polis granted him clemency, citing his educational and professional accomplishments. Open Campus and Chalkbeat Colorado covered that story, which won a first-place feature writing award from the Colorado chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. This past January, Carrillo marked two years of freedom — and his discharge from parole — with a "freedom bash" celebrating not just his own milestones, but the friends and fellow formerly incarcerated people around him who are out and building their lives. College Inside caught up with him on what the last two years have actually looked like.

This interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Charlotte West: Give me the quick recap — what have the last two years looked like since you walked out the prison gates more than two years ago?

David Carrillo: I had numerous ideas of what I'd like to do if I was ever released from prison — because I was doing life without the possibility of parole. I used to dream up ideas all the time. I would say to people, if they ever opened up the door for me, watch what I can do.

When I got out, I finished my ABE [adult basic education] certification through Red Rocks Community College, and they offered me a position as an adjunct instructor. I also continued teaching for Adams State.

I launched my own consulting business focused on plea bargain analysis. It grew out of my years as a jailhouse attorney on the inside, where guys would come to me because they didn't understand what their plea bargain actually meant — how it would affect their classification, their facility, their mandatory programming. They wanted to file ineffective assistance of counsel claims, grievances against their attorneys. That work evolved into what I do now: helping people understand how the type of plea, the type of felony, affects your earned time, your good time — all those elements that get overlooked when someone accepts a sentence.

In addition to your teaching, you also started your own business. Why might entrepreneurship be a good option for people coming home, and what are the real challenges?

I had visions and dreams — and one of the ideas that was ruminating when the door opened was this consulting idea. I needed to pursue it, at least to try. The challenges, though, are real. There's no secure paycheck, no benefits. I have to pay for my own insurance, pay my own taxes. There's a lot that goes into running your own business that people don't really understand until they're living it. Even with an MBA, the books don't teach you the subtleties — especially when it comes to entrepreneurship. I'm discovering new challenges as I go, and doing my best to navigate through them.

You mentioned there's a new full-time position you've taken on — can you give us a preview?

I'm now the lead facilitator for Legislation Inside, or ALLY, at the Corey Wise Innocence Project at University of Colorado Boulder. It's a legislatively mandated, codified program — 40 currently incarcerated individuals, elected by their peers across facilities in Colorado, are involved in public policy. They push forward bills, testify at committee hearings, write letters in support or opposition. I was one of the first elected representatives on the inside, and I testified at the capitol when the bill to codify the program passed. It's a full-time position.

David Carrillo, an adjunct professor with Adams State University, talks to his Intro to Macroeconomics class held in a Colorado prison in November 2023. He was the first incarcerated person in the state to teach a college-level class to other incarcerated people. He was released in Jan. 2024. (Photo: Rachel Woolf for Chalkbeat)

You've stayed involved in prison education since your release — and gotten more connected to the field nationally. What has that been like?

When I was released, I was given a fellowship with Jobs For the Future Horizons, and I was invited to a conference in Washington, DC, where I spoke on higher education in prison. Then I was invited to apply for the first cohort of the Rockwood Leadership program for higher education in prison. And then I went to the National Conference on Higher Education in Prison.

What I didn't realize was the scope of it. I had no idea how many people behind the scenes were even making it possible for me to become the first incarcerated college professor. And then I get to the JFF Horizons conference and there are thousands of people there — formerly incarcerated individuals doing amazing things across the country. Organizations like Ascendium, the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison. I mean, I've met a lot of people. It was great to see how many people out there are working to help provide opportunities for individuals to come home and find success.

You also wrote a memoir. Tell us about it.

It's titled Kiko: From Life Without Parole to Life With Purpose. It wasn't difficult to write — I'd been sharing those stories for years while teaching Seven Habits on the inside. When I came home and everybody was on me about writing my story, I sat down and it came out.

I've been doing author talks at colleges across Colorado — Red Rocks, Pueblo Community College, Colorado Mountain College, University of Northern Colorado. The response has been strong across a lot of different departments: psychology, criminal justice, sociology. I write about entering the foster care system at a very early age, juvenile detention, going into prison as a teenager, solitary confinement — statistically, my life was almost destined to end up in prison. And then how I took control and found myself on the opposite end of those statistics. I became the outlier. I was supposed to die in prison. But here I am.

What were some of the unanticipated challenges of reentry that caught you off guard?

I had listened for years to guys talk about the anxieties of coming home — walking into a store, going to a restaurant, all these people and overwhelming choices. I paid attention and did my best to prepare. And then I found myself sitting in the house one day, my girlfriend at work, no TV on, no music playing, just sitting in this depression, hurting real bad.

And I couldn't walk out the front door. I would look out the window at the street and want to go outside, but I was waiting for someone to call ‘movement’. For years at higher-security facilities, you can't just leave — they have to give you permission, open the door, call movement. I was waiting for permission that wasn't coming. I wouldn't even go into my own backyard. If someone called me up and said, hey, let's meet up, let's go have lunch — that was like permission for me to leave. I had my pass.

Going into the refrigerator was another one. My girlfriend had stocked it with food she thought I'd like, but I wouldn't open it. In prison, you don't go into your cellmate's box. Even though it was my food, in my mind that was her box — until she said I could help myself, it felt off limits. If I hadn't been self-aware about my own emotions and where those things can take you, something as simple as being afraid to open the refrigerator could have taken me somewhere bad.

What would you say to people inside about the value of a degree?

Education is going to give you a huge boost, a head start — but put it in perspective. Don't assume that just because you got the education in prison, you've got it all figured out. And don't assume you don't need it, because you absolutely do. The letters behind your name add credibility. You may be the smartest person in the room, but without those letters, sadly, a lot of people aren't even trying to hear what you have to say. Keep a mindset of continuous learning, and stay open — that's where community comes in.

Ascendium is a financial supporter of Open Campus. Read our editorial independence policy here.

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Earning a degree behind bars is difficult. Finding housing after release can be harder.

Charlotte West — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 01:11:12 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about education and employment during and after prison. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here’s what you need to know:

The number of people coming home from prison with college degrees is expected to increase with the return of Pell Grants. Recognizing that housing underpins successful reentry, some prison education programs are expanding their services. College Inside visited Hudson Link in New York State.
In a first-person essay we published last year, incarcerated writer Kwaneta Harris asks: how can prisons celebrate Black History Month while banning the very books that tell Black history?

Formerly incarcerated graduates face another hurdle on the outside: stable housing

Hector Gonzalez in June 2024, after he moved into a house run by Hudson Link, a prison education nonprofit in New York. Residents can focus on building careers, pursuing graduate degrees, or simply saving money — goals that would be difficult or impossible while scrambling to meet basic needs. Photo: Babita Patel for Open Campus

Marc Rowley and Hector Gonzalez walked through the door of Hudson Link's office in downtown Ossining empty-handed. The two men — both formerly incarcerated graduates of the organization’s prison education program — had just returned from the DMV, where Gonzalez had tried to get a driver’s license. It was the first official ID he’d ever had. But they'd hit a snag: he needed proof of address.

The two men met years earlier at the nearby Sing Sing Correctional Facility, New York’s oldest prison. Rowley was now 18 months into his own release and living in housing Hudson Link operates for formerly incarcerated alumni. When Gonzalez asked for help navigating the DMV — just three weeks after his release from serving more than 28 years in prison — Rowley's response was immediate: "I'll take you myself."

In the office where returning alumni regularly drop in for support, a Hudson Link staff member overheard their conversation. They pulled out a blank envelope, wrote down Gonzalez's address — one of Hudson Link’s houses in Ossining — and dropped it in the mail. Gonzalez could return to the DMV the following week with proof of address in hand.

For formerly incarcerated people like Gonzalez, earning a degree behind bars is only the first step toward rebuilding their lives. But without stable housing, the rest becomes nearly impossible. For Gonzalez, Hudson Link’s housing allowed him to get an ID, find employment, and build a foundation — tasks that would have been extremely difficult without a permanent address.

And the need for such support is growing. With the return of Pell Grants for incarcerated students in 2023, the number of people coming home with college degrees is expected to increase, according to Ruth Delaney, director of Vera Institute's Unlocking Potential initiative. Recognizing that housing underpins successful reentry, some prison education programs are expanding to provide their alumni with a place to live alongside job assistance and other support.

In New York, Hudson Link, which has offered college courses in prisons for more than 25 years, now operates reentry housing that provides rent-free accommodation and wraparound services to help its alumni rebuild their lives. In California, several campuses of the California State University system have opened dedicated housing for formerly incarcerated students. Thousands of miles east, the Tennessee Higher Education Initiative opened three houses in the Nashville area in 2024.

Formerly incarcerated people are 10 times more likely than the general population to be homeless, due to factors including scarcity of affordable housing, public housing bans for certain criminal records, employment barriers, and rental policies that bar people with criminal records. For formerly incarcerated college students specifically, 36% experience homelessness.

More than two decades ago, when Sean Pica was a student in the same program he now leads, he wrote his capstone project on a manual typewriter while incarcerated at Sing Sing. It was a research proposal for using formerly incarcerated people to rehabilitate dilapidated homes in impoverished communities.

Years later, Pica had that yellowed capstone sitting on his desk when a donor stopped by. The different fonts from the manual typewriter caught her eye. When Pica explained he'd written it 19 years earlier while living in Sing Sing, she wrote a check for $500,000 on the spot.

"We bought a house before we even planned it," Pica says.

More and more Hudson Link alumni were coming home, and Pica saw a gap: "New York has a tremendous amount of incredible reentry support, but not reentry support for formerly incarcerated college educated people."

Read the full story.

Related coverage: What it’s like to graduate behind bars

‘They ban books by Black authors. Then they tell us to celebrate Black History Month.’

Kwaneta Harris writes about the reality of censorship in a Texas women’s prison during Black History Month.

Photo by Charlotte West

The state asks us to celebrate Black History Month within these concrete walls, yet their very education system perpetuates erasure. In the high school readiness programs offered in Texas prisons, textbooks still cling to the sanitized narrative that the Civil War was merely about “states’ rights.” The same texts refer to enslaved people as “migrant workers,” a calculated distortion that obscures the brutal reality of chattel slavery.

While recent headlines focus on the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across America’s higher education system, such erasure of diverse perspectives is nothing new behind prison walls. As state legislatures and boards of regents debate whose histories deserve telling, those of us behind bars have long faced explicit bans on texts that challenge dominant narratives or examine racial and gender justice.

As an incarcerated Black woman, the hypocrisy is particularly stark. The “celebration” of Black History Month entails posters of MLK, George Washington Carver, and Rosa Parks plastered around the education building. The display in the library has lots of kente cloth borders and a table with self-help and religious books by “safe” Black authors.

This is the same prison library that bans works by Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, bell hooks and other Black female intellectuals under the guise of preventing “critical race theory indoctrination.” The selective censorship of Black feminist authors reflects the system’s fear of Black women who speak their truths.

Read Kwaneta’s full essay.

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State coalitions emerge as key infrastructure for higher education in prison

Charlotte West — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:33:12 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about education and employment during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here are the highlights:

This week, we look at the emergence of state coalitions for higher education in prison at a conference organized by the Colorado Coalition for Higher Education in prison.
Our local network partner, WBEZ, published a version of my story on a new report about earned time.

How do you get everyone on the same page?

Photo by Bryan Reckard/University of Colorado Denver

On a Friday afternoon in late January, directors of prison education programs, state higher education officials, corrections administrators, and nonprofit leaders gathered in Denver to discuss a challenge facing colleges working in prisons across the country: How do you get everyone on the same page?

The Colorado Coalition for Higher Education in Prison organized the conference with support from ECMC Foundation, bringing together experts from New Jersey, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, and other states to share strategies for building effective statewide coordination. As prison education programs have expanded following Pell Grant restoration in 2023, states are racing to build the infrastructure needed to coordinate multiple institutions, navigate complex funding streams, and remove policy barriers.

That infrastructure is becoming a competitive advantage—and it’s absence can create problems. Students lose credits when transferred between facilities if colleges don’t coordinate and employment barriers persist when agencies don’t align on certification requirements. Individual colleges working alone also often lack leverage to address systematic issues with departments of correction or influence policy—problems that require collective action.

When Jobs for the Future's Fair Chance to Advance initiative announced funding for State Action Networks in January, 31 states applied. The organization selected four: Oregon, Kansas, North Carolina, and Maine. Each state will receive funding, facilitation services, and technical assistance to expand postsecondary opportunities and remove policy barriers.

Rebecca Villareal, senior director at Jobs for the Future's Center for Justice & Economic Advancement, said states with active coalitions stood out in the selection process.

"The states that were most competitive and … most ready for systems change could point to active consortia that have a clear governance structure," Villareal said. "There are strong relationships and working collaborations within the institutions in those consortia. And so that certainly sets states [that are] really thinking about ecosystem coordination apart."

Villareal said the most successful model often has an external organization serving as the neutral convener rather than a single college or university taking charge. When individual institutions lead, there's a risk that conflicts of interest can emerge around enrollment, funding, and credit transfer. A nonprofit can ensure all participating institutions benefit equally.

In Texas, Alexa Garza founded the Texas Center for Higher Education in Prison to serve that neutral convening role. The Center brings together stakeholders who weren't previously communicating with one another across a large, decentralized state. Since 2023, Texas has grown from 11 to 25 colleges offering prison education programs, with about 2,700 students enrolled, she said. But the Center is still building basic infrastructure — hiring staff, establishing its nonprofit status, creating bylaws — while navigating complex dynamics between colleges and state agencies and other organizations.

Sean Mueller, a recent graduate of University of Colorado Denver who began his degree while incarcerated, conducted research on coalition development across two dozen states for the Colorado coalition. He said success comes down to priorities: "Getting all the groups that deliver that education together and getting everybody to play in the sandbox together is just crucial, with the understanding that it's not just about who controls what, but putting the student first.”

Mueller's research also found that larger states face greater challenges establishing and maintaining coalitions due to more facilities and stakeholders. Budget concerns and territorial issues over resources remain persistent challenges, he said.

Villareal also noted that collective advocacy carries more weight with policymakers and departments of correction than individual institutions working alone.

New Jersey offers an example of what mature coalition infrastructure looks like. Chris Agans leads New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons, known as NJ-STEP, which has woven together multiple institutions under different funding models into a coordinated statewide system.

The state offers an associate's degree program run entirely on Pell funding at scale across all New Jersey prisons. Because it's the same degree statewide, students can transfer between facilities without losing credits. Bachelor's degree programs supplement Pell funding with private and state money. Master's programs use a combined class model, bringing outside students into prison classrooms at a 2-to-1 ratio. he outside students' tuition covers the cost of delivery, Agans said during a panel.

Private institutions like Princeton don't matriculate students but contribute technology, research fellowships, and curriculum development to the collective effort.

The model works because New Jersey's Department of Corrections has strong central authority that allows coalition members to negotiate moving students between facilities and allocating classroom space to maintain the right balance of enrollments across different degree levels.

Colorado's coalition brings together six public colleges and universities, two private institutions, state agencies including the Department of Corrections and Department of Higher Education, and community organizations focused on reentry support and advocacy. One of the policy issues the coalition is tackling is extending the Colorado Opportunity Fund, state-level financial aid, to incarcerated students. Members of the coalition are working with state lawmakers and recently met with Gov. Jared Polis to discuss higher education in prison funding.

In early February, State Rep. Matthew Martinez (D - District 62) introduced a bill to create a working group focused on Colorado Opportunity Fund eligibility. The state financial aid program supplements Pell grants, but extending it to incarcerated students requires solving a state funding formula problem.

The working group will bring together prison education providers, the state Department of Higher Education and other stakeholders to develop recommendations for implementation. If the working group delivers recommendations by December, he plans to sponsor a bill extending the state financial aid to incarcerated students in January 2027, Martinez told Open Campus.

Molly Lasagna, senior strategy officer at Ascendium, pointed to a strategic shift among some funders at the conference. Speaking about Ascendium's approach, she emphasized focusing resources on states with political support for prison education rather than trying to work everywhere.

"Because of where we are right now with our administration, for the next several years our best approach is to try to really double down in the states where there is state-level support, and try to pour as much money and resources and attention into the states where we feel like there's bold action and political cover," Lasagna said.

Several patterns emerged from the Colorado gathering. Successful coalitions coordinate across sectors, bringing together colleges, state agencies, departments of correction, community organizations, and people with lived experience. Colleges alone can't address the barriers formerly incarcerated students face around employment, education, housing, and collateral consequences. Credit transfer policies and financial aid eligibility similarly require coordination across agencies, experts said.

Lasagna said stakeholders need to come together to address state-level barriers like certification and licensure requirements. "There's no way for us to address those unless we're talking about a coordinated approach at the state level," she said, "which means state agencies talking to each other, sharing data with each other, and looking in the same direction."

Ascendium is a financial supporter of Open Campus. Read our editorial independence policy here).

New & views

This section is written by Vee Santoscoy, an Open Campus editorial assistant supported by the Humanities Institute at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Lawmakers are re-introducing The Prison Libraries Act, a federal bill that would create a Department of Justice grant program to expand and strengthen prison library services, aiming to increase educational opportunities, support reintegration, and reduce recidivism for people who are incarcerated. The bill has broad support from organizations such as the American Library Association, crediting the potential benefits of expanded access to books, digital tools, and skills training for incarcerated individuals.

Following the release of the 2025 documentary The Alabama Solution, the incarcerated activists — who provided cell phone footage from inside their facilities for the film — Raoul Poole, Robert Earl Council, and Melvin Ray have been reportedly taken from their facilities and transferred to an extreme solitary confinement unit in Kilby Correctional Facility, where they have been held since mid-January, according to The Appeal. The Alabama Solution is now streaming on Amazon Prime, HBO Max and Hulu.

Additional coverage on an Ohio bill from our local partner newsroom, Signal Cleveland, examines proposed legislation that could end college and career-technical education programs in the state’s higher-security state prisons, a move that could significantly reduce educational access for incarcerated people. In a recent op-ed from the Columbus Dispatch, guest columnist and assistant professor of social work and faculty in the Prison Education Program at Wilmington College, Laura Mishne Heller questions the intent of the bill: “By pairing harsher penalties with the removal of educational opportunities, the bill conflates accountability and rehabilitation into a single response, raising serious questions about safety and effectiveness.”

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The Recordkeeping Problem Keeping People Locked Up Longer

Charlotte West — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 17:57:25 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about education and employment during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Illustration by Emily Jenkins for Open Campus

‘No Good Time For You’

More than 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the United States. Nearly every state now has some form of time credit program, often called “earned time,” that allows people to reduce their sentences through education, work, or good behavior. Since 2020, 27 states have expanded these laws.

But a new study examining time credit policies in 11 jurisdictions, including the federal Bureau of Prisons, found that outdated technology and fragmented recordkeeping systems routinely prevent incarcerated people from accessing credits they’ve legally earned — sometimes keeping people locked up longer than they were supposed to be.

At least 370 lawsuits have been filed in the past decade — 70 against state agencies and over 300 in federal court — alleging failures in tracking time credits. Incarcerated individuals won about one-third of the state cases.

The findings arrive at a critical moment: states have expanded credit-earning opportunities faster than they’ve modernized the systems needed to run them. The result, the report shows, is a growing gap between what the law promises and what people inside actually receive.

“What we found is that implementation — not intent — is the barrier,” Jessica Hicklin, founder and co-executive director of educational technology nonprofit Unlocked Labs, told Open Campus. “Outdated data systems, inconsistent credit calculations, and fragmented program tracking have turned a promising evidence-based reform into a patchwork of inequity and missed opportunity.”

The findings draw from 34 interviews with correctional professionals and formerly incarcerated individuals conducted in 2025. Unlocked Labs conducted the study in partnership with Arizona State University with support from Arnold Ventures.

In many systems, the technology to solve these problems already exists but is underutilized. Tablets have been distributed across facilities but are rarely used for tracking credits or providing access to records.

Participants called for integrated digital systems, automated credit calculations, full use of tablets for transparency, and clearer policies.

The report concludes that “reforming the laws is not enough. Effective time credit policies require the operational tools and digital infrastructure to ensure accountability, consistency, and fairness.”

Hicklin, the Unlocked founder, said the fixes are within reach. “This is fundamentally an infrastructure problem, and infrastructure problems have solutions,” she said. “States can build transparent, automated, and reliable systems that ensure earned progress leads to earned release.”

Read the full story here.

An inside look at college in Indiana Women’s Prison

Addison Pijnappels (left) and Amy Hockett (right) are students in Marian University’s college program at the Indiana Women’s Prison, the only women’s prison in Indiana to offer a bachelor’s program. Photo: Charlotte West/Open Campus

Amy Hockett had been through it before. A college program would arrive at Indiana Women’s Prison with big promises — degrees, a path forward, a chance to transform her life.

She’d enroll, start classes, get through a semester. Then the program would disappear.

It happened again. And again. By the time Marian University showed up in 2019 with its liberal arts program, Hockett wasn’t buying it. She’d already earned her GED during her lengthy sentence and worked through self-help programs to “become a better person.” She’d heard the college pitch before.

“We had so many college programs here that started and failed,” she said. “A lot of us are like, ‘yeah, I’m not going to waste my time for a semester.’”

But Marian stuck around. And now, in her fourth year, Hockett is graduating with her bachelor’s degree this fall — one of around 50 women who’ve earned associate or bachelor’s degrees from the program since it launched.

The Women’s College Partnership, run by Marian in collaboration with the Bard Prison Initiative, represents a rare opportunity in Indiana. It’s a chance for incarcerated women to earn a liberal arts degree, the kind of education that asks students to read deeply, think critically, and engage with big ideas.

Read the full story by Charlotte West and Claire Rafford published in collaboration with our local partner in Indianapolis, Mirror Indy.

News & Views

This section is written by Charlotte West and Vee Santoscoy, an Open Campus editorial assistant supported by the Humanities Institute at the University of California Santa Crus.

About one in four people incarcerated in Virginia are waiting to access prison education programs due to limited capacity, staffing shortages, technology and infrastructure, as well as inconsistent programming, according to a November story published by the Virginia Mercury. As of February 2025, around 5,700 individuals were on waiting lists for educational programs, highlighting the demand that far surpasses the state correction department’s capacity, according to a legislative report prepared at the request of state lawmakers. As Open Campus has previously reported, other states such as Illinois are now starting to track the amount of time that someone is on a wait list before they are able to access education.

An Ohio prison safety bill sparked by the murder of a correctional officer has passed the state House 82-3—but buried in the legislation is a provision that would eliminate all college programs at high-security prisons, the Dayton Daily News reports. The proposed law would potentially affect around half of Sinclair Community College's 2,600 incarcerated students and also removes tablets for personal use at high-security facilities, which criminal justice scholar Jonathan Morgan says eliminates “the only realistic pathway to structured learning” for many in maximum security. None of the eight higher education institutions offering prison programs in Ohio—including Ohio-based Ashland University, one of the country's largest tablet-based education providers—publicly testified on the bill during the House committee. The bill now heads to the state Senate.

A new Colorado State Library study shows that prison libraries do far more than provide books—they improve mental health, strengthen social connections, and encourage positive behavior. Despite challenges like limited collections and staffing, incarcerated people consistently praised their libraries as rare safe spaces where they can connect with others, manage emotions, and build community. Researchers say strengthening prison library services can improve well-being behind bars and support successful reentry to families and communities. The project has also created a toolkit for other state library systems.

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One prisoner's fight to expand work release jobs in Wisconsin

Charlotte West — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 20:51:21 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about the education during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

A photo illustration shows a letter Ben Kingsley wrote to Warden Clinton Bryant about the lack of jobs for people incarcerated at Winnebago Correctional Center. Kingsley contacted Wisconsin Watch with his concerns, and reporter Natalie Yahr investigated. Credit: Photo illustration by Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch

This week's issue of College Inside comes from our partner newsroom Wisconsin Watch, where Natalie Yahr reports on an incarcerated man's push for more work release jobs. Wisconsin pioneered the century-old program that lets prisoners earn real wages, but jobs are scarce and officials don't track participation numbers.

A century after pioneering work release, Wisconsin corrections officials don't track how many prisoners participate

By Natalie Yahr, Wisconsin Watch

Most of the jobs available to Wisconsin prisoners are paid not in dollars, but cents. Minimum wage laws don't apply behind bars, so some people scrub toilets for less than a quarter an hour.

But one type of job lets people leave prison for the day to earn the same wages as anyone else.

Wisconsin was the first state to offer this opportunity, known as work release. The century-old program matches the lowest-risk prisoners with approved employers, who are required by law to pay them as much as any other worker. In some cases, that's more than $15 an hour.

Through those jobs, prisoners boost their resumes, pay court costs and save up for their release. Employers find needed workers. And taxpayers save money, since work release participants must pay room and board.

Ten of the state's 16 minimum-security correctional centers are dedicated to work release. But prisoners at those facilities say there aren't nearly enough of those jobs to go around, and officials at the Department of Corrections say they're not keeping count.

One prisoner told Wisconsin Watch he believes less than a third of those eligible at his facility have such work release jobs. Prisoners routinely wait many months for the opportunity, he said, and many never get it at all.

"Having that money saved up to, say, get an apartment or get furniture, or even money for transportation?" said Ben Kingsley, 47, who wrote to Wisconsin Watch in August from Winnebago Correctional Center, a work release center in Oshkosh. "These guys know what's at stake … They want to go out to work."

Only prison officials can add more positions, and he questions whether they're trying. This summer, he began lobbying prison officials and lawmakers to expand the opportunity.

Work release jobs are scarce, prisoners say

To qualify for work release in Wisconsin, a prisoner must be classified in the lowest custody level and have permission from prison officials. In Wisconsin, people approved for work release can work only for one of the Department of Corrections' partner employers.

"Placements cannot be guaranteed for all eligible inmates," reads Winnebago Correctional Center's official webpage. "Work release and offsite opportunities are a privilege, not a right, and are provided at the discretion of the center superintendent and warden."

About 70% of eligible people incarcerated at Winnebago don't have work release jobs, Kingsley estimates. Of the 295 people incarcerated at Winnebago at the end of October, 224 had the lowest custody status, which is required for work release, according to the Department of Corrections. By Kingsley's calculations, just 67 have work release jobs. That's less than one in three.

"Oh gosh, it's a huge concern," Kingsley said.

Officials offer explanations. Not everyone who's eligible wants a work release job, said Department of Corrections spokesperson Beth Hardtke. Some are in education, therapy or substance use treatment programs that don't allow them to work full time. And those who seek work release must first work at least 90 days in a prison job, followed by a stint on a "project crew" supervised by Corrections staff, before getting permission from the warden or superintendent.

"The capacity of the work release program is not just about the number of jobs available," Hardtke said. "The program must be limited to the number of individuals that DOC staff can safely support and in settings where we can safely support them."

Officials and prisoners tout benefits

Work release got its start in 1913 when the Huber Law, named for Progressive Republican lawmaker Henry Allen Huber, created the opportunity at Wisconsin's county jails. It later spread to state prisons and to nearly every state in the country.

More than a century later, Wisconsin prison leaders continue to extol the virtues of letting people leave prison and return at the end of their shifts.

"Work release gives the men and women in our care the opportunity to feel like they belong to something, to feel like they're part of a positive contribution to the community," said Sarah Cooper, then-administrator of the Division of Adult Institutions, at a virtual presentation for prospective employers in 2022.

Research suggests people who participate in work release programs are less likely to return to prison. A study of former prisoners in Illinois from 2016 to 2021 found those who had held work release jobs were about 15% less likely to be rearrested and 37% less likely to be reincarcerated.

Work release also offsets some of the taxpayer costs of imprisonment. Each participating prisoner must pay $750 a month for room and board, about 20% of the roughly $3,650 a month the state pays to incarcerate each prisoner in the minimum-security system. They must also use their wages to make any legally mandated payments, including child support and victim restitution.

For men in Wisconsin prisons, work release jobs are usually in manufacturing. For women, there are jobs in food service or cosmetology too. They're "low-level, intensive labor jobs," Kingsley said, but people are eager for the chance to start saving, especially since a criminal record and gaps in work history could make it tough to find work when they get out.

"When you get locked up, you lose everything," Kingsley said. "The benefit (of working) far outweighs the negatives."

No statewide data available

How many prisoners participate in work release statewide? Corrections officials don't consistently keep track, Hardtke said.

The department's public data dashboards show prisoner demographics, recidivism rates and enrollment in educational or treatment programs, among other things. Employment numbers are not included.

The latest numbers Wisconsin Watch could find are from 2024: 781 people had work release jobs in July 2024.

Asked for a current figure, Hardtke said "that number is not something we have readily available."

Officials also don't track how many people are eligible for work release. As of Oct. 31, 2,778 Wisconsin prisoners were at the department's lowest custody level.

Several neighboring states routinely track how many people have work release jobs or are eligible for them. Of the 11 other Midwestern states Wisconsin Watch asked, seven responded, and most said they track participation numbers.

Prisoner pushes for more jobs

In July, Kingsley wrote to Warden Clinton Bryant, who oversees the men's minimum-security centers, asking him to add 100 more work release jobs. Adding those jobs would generate $75,000 a month in room and board payments, along with state taxes, he wrote.

Bryant responded that Winnebago Correctional Center "collaborates with community employers on a daily basis" and that prison officials can't require employers to hire anyone.

When Kingsley contacted Bryant again, urging the department to establish minimum job placement rates for work release centers, the warden ended the conversation. So Kingsley took the issue to the State Capitol.

As of publication of this story, Kingsley has yet to receive a reply.

Read Natalie’s full story.

This story is part of our partnership with Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit newsroom focused on government accountability and quality of life issues in Wisconsin.

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This class helps incarcerated men learn about fatherhood

Charlotte West — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 21:05:37 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about education during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Demetrice Brown (center) talks about his family and how he plans to navigate his role as a father at the final class in the Fathers and Families Center’s Up and Out program Nov. 14, 2025, at the Duvall Residential Facility in Indianapolis. Credit: Stephanie Amador for Mirror Indy

This week's issue of College Inside comes from our partner newsroom Mirror Indy, where Claire Rafford writes about a class giving incarcerated men the tools they need to be emotionally supportive parents. Men who want to participate in employment programs offered by the Indianapolis-based non-profit Fathers and Families Center have to complete parenting classes as part of their curriculum.

‘Our most important goal is to create better fathers, and employment is one part of that.’

William Blade wants to be a “patient, discerning and all-in dad.”

It’s something he thought about a lot working through a parenting class he took while incarcerated at Duvall Residential Facility in Indianapolis. Though he hasn’t seen his kids — ages 8 and 10 — in several years, he’s realized how important his role as their dad is.

“I do matter,” Blade, who is 30, told Mirror Indy. “I have to be in their life.”

The class was part of Fathers and Families Center’s Out and Up program, an Indianapolis-based non-profit that offers parenting classes to men who are incarcerated. Most of the men in the classes are fewer than 90 days from being released. This latest cohort is the first graduating class at Duvall, an alternative to jail where men live but can leave to go to work or school.

Fathers and Families Center offers a similar class to dads who are not incarcerated. Completing the fatherhood curriculum is required for any dad who wants to participate in the organization’s other programs, such as construction training.

“Employment is not our primary goal,” said Larry Smith, president and CEO of Fathers and Families Center. “Our most important goal is to create better fathers, and employment is one part of that.”

Former NFL wide receiver Corey Parchman speaks to men in the Fathers and Families Center’s Up and Out program Nov. 14, 2025, at the Duvall Residential Facility in Indianapolis. Credit: Stephanie Amador for Mirror Indy

Fatherhood 101

Through the classes, Fathers and Families aims to give men the tools they need to be emotionally supportive parents.

“The vast majority of the men we serve grew up in a home in which their father was not present,” Smith said. “Part of it is literally just learning, what does a father do? How is the father supposed to be?”

Instructor Brian Carter estimates that he’s taught parenting classes to close to 1,000 dads over decades working as a social worker. As part of that, he encourages men to think about their own dads, and how their experiences have shaped how they think about fatherhood.

“You can’t get stuck in the past,” he said. “You have to say, ‘I’m going to be different. Even if my dad was a good dad, I’m going to be a better dad.’”

It’s important to Carter that his classroom is a judgement-free zone, where men can speak openly about topics that are sometimes considered taboo. Dads talk about everything from potty training to creating family traditions to why kids might be getting suspended from school.

“If you don’t understand development, discipline is going to be a disaster,” Carter said, “because you’re not understanding, this is what (kids) do.”

Brian Carter, the parenting facilitator, teaches the final class in the Fathers and Families Center’s Up and Out program Nov. 14, 2025, at the Duvall Residential Facility in Indianapolis. Credit: Stephanie Amador for Mirror Indy

Fatherhood, inside

Kemontez Beatty signed up for the parenting class to be a better role model for his three young kids.

“I don’t want them to follow in my footsteps,” Beatty, who is 29, said.

He’s hoping that enrolling in construction training classes with Fathers and Families will help set him up for success.

“I want to actually build something,” Beatty said, “Take pictures of it to show to my kids, ‘This is what Daddy did. I built it.’”

From left, Justin Martin and Maurice Bullock look over notecards, made by children in the community to support the graduating class of the Fathers and Families Center’s Up and Out program Nov. 14, 2025, at the Duvall Residential Facility in Indianapolis. Credit: Stephanie Amador for Mirror Indy

Blade is also planning to take the construction classes, because he likes working with his hands and wants a career.

When he does get back in touch with his children, Blade said he wants to be in a position where he can be in their lives for good. Completing the parenting class is one step towards that.

In the meantime, Blade is thinking of the moment when he’ll get to see his kids again.

“I’m just gonna hold them for a good, strong three minutes,” he said. “That’s a long time.”

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Parole boards say education matters. Their denials tell a different story.

Charlotte West — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 21:25:34 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about higher education during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

A 2024 college graduation at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York. Photo by Babita Patel for Open Campus.

After 24 years in prison, a 58-year-old woman went before California’s parole board for the first time with what looked like a strong case for release. She had earned an associate’s degree and was working toward a bachelor’s at Cal State LA. She had completed years of programming, earned praise from correctional staff, and hadn’t had a violent disciplinary infraction in more than two decades.

At a hearing in the fall of 2023, a parole commissioner started with some good news: "You've done everything objectively speaking that we want you to do." Unfortunately, there was a problem: "the subjective part of you hasn't quite gotten to the surface that you've addressed it to the depth that you need to." Figuring out exactly what those words meant was confusing, but the final decision was clear. The board denied her parole.

The exchange reflected a conundrum familiar to many incarcerated people seeking release—meeting every official requirement isn’t always enough when decisions hinge on something much harder to pin down.

California is one of 35 states that allow people to appear before a parole board, which decides whether they should be released before their sentence ends based on factors such as conduct, rehabilitation, and perceived risk. California granted parole in only about one in five cases in 2024, according to the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, or PPI.

The California woman’s case echoes findings from a new two-part analysis by the organization examining how parole boards operate. The remaining states have effectively eliminated parole altogether—a trend that continued in 2024 when Louisiana became the 17th state to abolish it.

Image courtesy of the Prison Policy Initiative.

The report describes a parole system that’s politically motivated, under-resourced, and often dysfunctional—with declining approval rates and fewer hearings despite a national backlog of more than 200,000 people incarcerated past their parole-eligibility dates. The PPI report finds that those problems are especially apparent in how parole boards weigh education and other programming—achievements often framed as a sign of transformation but very often dismissed or ignored. While states such as Massachusetts and Pennsylvania explicitly direct boards to consider an individual’s educational or vocational progress, the report shows that in practice these achievements rarely outweigh other factors.

About half of the 35 states list education as a forward-looking factor in release decisions, but the reality is more complicated. The report finds that even though educational accomplishments can help someone's case, they are often dismissed as insufficient—or even used as negative strikes if applicants are unable to complete them.

“Parole statutes pay lip service to important dynamic factors, like rehabilitation, preparation, public support, and education, but too often issue denials for static factors, like the original crime, or overly subjective factors, such as the optics of releasing someone who has been convicted of such a crime,” the authors write.

All 35 states require boards to consider the “seriousness” of the crime of conviction, even though judges already weighed that at sentencing. Six states go further, requiring boards to consider whether release would “diminish” respect for the law—a standard focused on optics rather than an individual’s readiness for release, according to the report.

The crime is the one factor people can’t change, yet it often carries the most weight. Degrees, completed programs, and years without disciplinary issues may demonstrate rehabilitation, but they rarely offset the original offense in the eyes of the board.

Image courtesy of the Prison Policy Initiative.

And even the efforts meant to show change can become obstacles. Education and program participation appear frequently in parole guidelines, but the standards can be impossible to meet. The Prison Policy Initiative describes this as a kind of bureaucratic gridlock—parole boards decide the criteria for release, but corrections departments control access to the programs applicants are required to complete. Classes are often canceled, full, or unavailable, leaving people unable to finish what the board requires.

Board members may question these gaps in an applicant’s educational record, even when due to factors beyond the applicant’s control. “Board members may see an incompletion, withdrawal, or other ‘gap’ in an applicant’s record and start to ask questions, even if those changes occurred because of a transfer, illness, or a sincere schedule conflict,” the report notes.

Those contradictions leave many people unsure how to demonstrate readiness for release. A college degree might show a commitment to change, but, as the report suggests, it doesn’t guarantee a fair hearing. “Parole can be denied for nearly any reason at all,” the authors write. “Such denials send a harmful message: the parole board neither recognizes nor rewards transformation.”

Another California transcript shows how boards discount education. In 2022, a man with two associate degrees was denied after 24 years. His programming was neutral, the board said—recent disciplinary infractions proved he lacked real insight into how his programming could help avoid the choices that led him to prison in the first place.

The 58-year-old woman heard similar. Her rehabilitation was "primarily intellectual in nature." Despite her degrees and extensive programming, she hadn't done enough internal work to prevent future harm.

Taken together, the hearings mirror a broader pattern identified by the Prison Policy Initiative report. Educational achievements often become secondary to subjective judgments about whether someone has truly changed. The authors of the report argue that presumptive parole—a system that assumes release once someone has met the state's criteria unless the board provides a specific reason for denial—could move states toward “a fairer framework centered on success and transformation.” They also urge policymakers to focus on measurable signs of change—participation in education, treatment, and work programs—rather than static factors that applicants can never alter.

Read the full PPI report here.

Interested in learning more about the politics of parole? Illinois abolished discretionary parole in 1978, but a handful of people convicted before then remain eligible. Ronnie Carrasquillo was one of them. The PBS documentary "In Their Hands" follows Carrasquillo—who was denied parole more than 30 times despite earning a bachelor's degree in theology and founding education programs in prison—through his decades-long fight for release. The film explores how political pressure and police union influence shape parole board decisions. Watch it here.

Illinois edition of College Inside out now

Last week, Prisoncast! our partner at WBEZ Chicago, sent out the latest print issue of the Illinois edition of College Inside to more than 400 individuals residing in the Illinois Department of Corrections. The issue included an analysis of new data on education waitlists, a story on Augustana College’s recent graduation, a profile of a man who transferred from Illinois to Minnesota to attend law school while still incarcerated, and a round-up of criminal justice news from around the state.

Next, Prisoncast! is teaming up with a group of formerly incarcerated actors and writers to broadcast a new radio play. "The Story of Violence," based on an award-winning script by playwrights at Dixon Correctional Center in Illinois, examines Chicago’s gun violence problem through five characters’ perspectives as their lives intersect at a downtown hotel room. Listen to "The Story of Violence," from WBEZ & Mud Theatre Project, on Thursday, Nov. 6th at 7 p.m. central time on wbez.org.

The 2026-2027 FAFSA for incarcerated students now available

The official 2026-27 FAFSA for incarcerated students is now posted on the NASFAA Prison Education page. Both the English and Spanish versions of the 2026-27 forms are available and ready for use. They are not currently available on the Education Department website due to the government shutdown.

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The waiting game

Charlotte West — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 18:09:52 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about higher education during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here are the highlights:

Last week, the Illinois Department of Corrections released a first-of-its kind report on higher education enrollment and waitlists. Open Campus dug into the numbers for a story with our local newsroom partner, WBEZ Chicago.

For every incarcerated student in Illinois prisons, another waits their turn.

Incarcerated Lewis University students sit during a class inside Sheridan Correctional Center, which is located about 70 miles southwest of Chicago. Charlotte West/Open Campus

For every person enrolled in higher education at Illinois prisons, someone else is waiting for their turn, according to new state data that reveals a system where access to college depends largely on where someone is incarcerated.

Right now, roughly 2,000 people in Illinois prisons are participating in higher education programs, according to a report released at the beginning of September. That’s about 1 out of every 15 people incarcerated in the state. At the same time, though, another 2,000 are stuck on waiting lists to get into classes because there’s not enough programming available.

Another 700 people on supervised release — Illinois’ version of parole — are also enrolled in higher education, per the report. Those numbers include enrollment in both college classes, and career and technical education.

People in Illinois prisons have been on waiting lists an average of 1.3 years, according to an analysis by Open Campus. Rebecca Ginsburg, director of the Education Justice Project at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said the data about how and where incarcerated students are being served allow colleges and the Illinois Department of Corrections to make informed decisions about higher education in Illinois prisons.

“The fact that around 2,000 individuals are on waitlists — almost the same number as are actually enrolled — suggests that we need to greatly scale up [higher education in prison] in Illinois,” Ginsburg said.

Research shows that participating in prison education helps people find employment after release and helps keep them from going back to prison. In Illinois, some people who complete educational programs can also earn time off their sentences, allowing them to be released earlier.

That means lots of people locked up in Illinois want to get into higher education programs, but they routinely complain about long waitlists, or that programs simply aren’t available at many prisons.

“Some of the things that hold programs back from sustainable growth include access to classroom space inside prisons and funding,” Ginsburg said.

How long’s the wait? Depends on geography

The data show wait lists vary wildly across Illinois, depending on the prison. The longest waits in the system are at Logan Correctional Center, the state’s main women’s prison, where people have been on an education wait list for an average of almost five years. The longest wait at a men’s facility is at Danville Correctional Center, where people have been on wait lists an average of 4.2 years.

The system generally prioritizes educating people who are the closest to being released, but this leaves some behind for decades.

At Big Muddy River Correctional Center, one person has been on a waitlist since 2006 — nearly 19 years — and many others have been waiting more than five years. At Logan, at least seven women have been on the wait list since 2013. Most of those with the longest waits are serving life or other long sentences.

IDOC spokesperson Naomi Puzzello acknowledged the geographic disparities, saying the department is “optimistic” about expanding education with current and potential education partners, particularly in central and southern Illinois, where the need is greatest.

Many of the longest wait times are at the facilities that offer the most educational opportunities. Logan, for instance, is the only Illinois women’s prison that offers significant higher education opportunities, including a bachelor’s program from Northwestern University and a master’s program from North Park University.

Danville offers classes from the U of I, as well as associate’s and bachelor’s degrees. At Sheridan prison, the waitlist has grown significantly in the last few years with the facility absorbing Northwestern’s bachelor’s program when Stateville Correctional Center shut down in 2024. It’s also home to other programs, such as Lewis University.

Some facilities have very short waitlists — not because they efficiently serve students, but because they offer very few educational opportunities. Menard Correctional Center, the state’s largest maximum security men’s prison, has just eight people enrolled in higher education and eight people on the waitlist. The facility, located in far southwestern Illinois, offers only two training programs — building maintenance and small engines — but no college classes, according to the IDOC website.

Pontiac Correctional Center, a men’s maximum security facility housing almost 500 people, shows no waitlist because it offers only basic education and high school equivalency programs — no college classes, according to the IDOC website.

Waitlist time down for high school-level courses

The statewide enrollment figures may appear to overstate the scope of prison-based higher education. Around 700 people — or a quarter of those the IDOC reported as being enrolled in higher education — are on supervised release. That means they are enrolled in outside institutions, not participating in prison-based classes.

The waitlists extend beyond higher education to basic literacy and high school programs. Nearly 12,000 people participated in adult basic education and high school equivalency programs, with over 5,000 more waiting for access. The report doesn’t break down these waitlists by facility, but data on educational spending shows disparities across institutions.

Puzzello said that wait times are down significantly for students earning their high school equivalency within IDOC.

“With increased education staffing across facilities, more students are enrolling in and completing programs, including successfully meeting testing requirements for credentialing,” Puzzello wrote in an email to WBEZ.

The data comes from a first-of-its-kind report on prison higher education published at the beginning of September. In 2023, Illinois lawmakers passed legislation requiring IDOC to annually publish detailed data about enrollment, waitlists, and spending on educational programs.

Scott Smallwood, Open Campus’ co-founder and CEO, contributed to the data analysis in this story. This story was produced in partnership with Prisoncast!, WBEZ’s engaged journalism project for people incarcerated in Illinois.

News and views

A new report from the University of Puget Sound found that thousands of incarcerated students are enrolled in college courses but lack access to the critical academic supports available to students on traditional campuses. This report calls on universities to extend their campus-based teaching and learning resources into the higher education in prison programs.

ITHAKA S+R released a new analysis examining the challenges of collecting reliable data on higher education in prison programs. Based on interviews with program leaders, corrections staff, and researchers, the report identifies barriers to building sustainable data systems for this growing field.

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Four takeaways from our survey on college and career after prison

Charlotte West — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 16:25:30 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about the intersection of higher education and criminal justice. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here’s what you need to know:

• Join me, Charlotte West, along with Lawrence Bartley and Martin Garcia of The Marshall Project, next week for an Alliance for Higher Education in Prison Community Conversation about navigating the media and how journalists go about their jobs. Come and ask all the questions you have about how we cover the higher ed and criminal justice systems during this webinar on Monday, Aug. 18 at 3pm eastern.

• This newsletter was nominated for the Breaking Barriers Award from the Institute for Nonprofit News.

• Today we're sharing a few takeaways from our survey on college and career after incarceration. We partnered with Jobs for the Future's Center for Justice & Economic Advancement to gather insights from nearly 100 formerly incarcerated people about their experiences with higher education and the job market. There’s more to come, but we wanted to share some of the common themes people shared.

• ICYMI: This story we published last month details how federal funding cuts have outsized consequences for formerly incarcerated people. And don’t forget to check out Kun Lyna Tauch's essay about how AmeriCorps funding cuts affected him.

‘Don't assume you're limited to trades or manual labor’

Photo by Charlotte West for Open Campus

This spring, in collaboration with Jobs for the Future's Center for Justice & Economic Advancement, College Inside launched a survey on college and career after incarceration. Nearly 100 formerly incarcerated people filled it out, sharing insights from their experiences with navigating higher education and the job market. (The survey remains open for anyone who wants to contribute their experiences.) Some of the most striking responses were about what people wish they had known before they came home. Here are a four takeaways:

People assume degrees will open all doors while not always understanding what career paths their degrees actually enable.

Many respondents assumed that having a bachelor’s degree would immediately translate into a career, while others weren’t aware of the possible career paths they could take.

Maria Garza, who continued her bachelor's degree at Northwestern University after being released from the Illinois Department of Corrections, said she thought that just having a degree from a top ranked university would secure her a great job. "That would be true only if we knew what type of jobs the degree supports," she said, noting the disconnect that sometimes occurs between academia and employers.

This echoes what we heard during a listening session earlier this year with our partner WBEZ Chicago at Sheridan Correctional Center, where students pointed to the lack of basic information about professional paths. People often have limited aspirations because they don't know what's possible.

"Don't assume you're limited to trades or manual labor," wrote Jarret Orcutt, who now works in higher education in Nevada, in his survey response. "If you want to be a professor, a coder, or run your own nonprofit—you can."

Tech is a barrier in job searches. Learning digital skills can also help build social capital.

After years or decades without technology access, people are expected to navigate a digital job market. Basic skills like filling out online applications or using LinkedIn become major barriers. L.Elizabeth Shatswell was able to secure her current position because she debated with her now-boss on a LinkedIn post — but as she noted, you need digital literacy from the very beginning just to complete job applications.

This aligns with what we found in our previous survey about technology use in prison, where respondents consistently highlighted the gap between the digital skills needed for reentry and what's available inside.

Learning digital skills can also help build social capital. As Shatswell's experience shows, being able to engage professionally online — whether through LinkedIn comments, joining industry groups, or maintaining a professional network — can open doors

Higher education in prison can be transformative, but lack of experience remains a hurdle when job searching.

Education provides crucial personal development and opens minds to new possibilities, but employers still prioritize practical work experience that's difficult to gain while incarcerated.

"Employers did not care about my education when I was released. They wanted experience," said Tommy DeLuna, who recently graduated from Sacramento State University in California.

In response to this gap, organizations like the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison and JFF are developing work-based learning initiatives to help bridge this experience gap, as we've previously reported.

The most valuable reentry information came from other formerly incarcerated people, not formal programs.

As we've heard before during our listening session in Chicago, peer support can be one of the most valuable resources for reentry.

"The most important source of information wasn't a website, a book, or a flyer — it was people," said Elon Molina, an alum of the Bard Prison Initiative in New York state who now works as a learning and development specialist for a roofing company. "Conversations with others who had already walked the path after release were my greatest resource."

But the networking challenge goes deeper than just information sharing. Professional success often depends on personal connections — something that can be particularly difficult for formerly incarcerated people who may have limited professional networks or whose previous connections may no longer be relevant to their post-release goals.

College Inside nominated for INN's Breaking Barriers Award

We're excited to share that the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) has nominated this newsletter for its Breaking Barriers Award, which recognizes reporting that brings new understanding to an issue or topic affecting people or communities that are historically underrepresented, disadvantaged or marginalized, and results in impactful change.

It is the first INN Nonprofit News Awards nomination for Open Campus. INN — which is a membership organization of hundreds of nonprofit newsrooms — received more than 600 entries in total for its awards this year. We’ll find out if we won on Sept. 10.

New and views

JFF, with support from Ascendium, has launched an RFP for Fair Chance to Advance State Action Networks, selecting four states to receive up to $2.1 million in funding each to expand high-quality education and training programs in correctional facilities. States interested in applying must submit a nonbinding letter of intent by August 26, 2025, with full proposals due October 14, 2025. Learn more here.

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Interested in reaching people who care about higher education in prisons? Get in touch at sales@opencampusmedia.org or request our media kit.

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"AmeriCorps gave me a bridge back to society. Then Trump cut the funding."

Charlotte West — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 19:46:37 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about the intersection of higher education and criminal justice. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Federal funding cuts have outsized consequences for formerly incarcerated people

Kun Lyna "K" Tauch is an Americorps volunteer at The Prism Way, a Los Angeles-based reentry organization. Photo courtesy of Kun Lyna “K” Tauch.

Today we're featuring a first-person essay by Kun Lyna "K" Tauch, who wrote his first story for College Inside while he was still locked up. Since then, he's gotten out, gone back into prison to graduate with his California State University Los Angeles cohort, and started building a new life as a volunteer through California Justice Leaders, a partnership between AmeriCorps and the nonprofit Impact Justice aimed at supporting formerly incarcerated adults. Now he reflects on the federal program that he says gave him a pathway to a career—and the uncertainty of its future.

As he puts it: "When you've spent 18 years learning to be an adult in prison, programs like California Justice Leaders aren't just jobs — they're bridges back to society."

K's experience is part of a broader theme we've been tracking: how federal funding cuts have outsized consequences for formerly incarcerated people. Many of the programs President Donald Trump’s administration has eliminated or is considering cutting serve that exact demographics that formerly incarcerated people often fall into: low-income students, first-generation students, older adults entering the workforce, and people who need basic literacy and job training.

K described how many of his formerly incarcerated peers had to immediately start looking for other positions when Americorps funding was abruptly cut off in April. As one person we talked to said, they don’t have the luxury of waiting around. Many formerly incarcerated people have families to take care of, or have to keep a job as a condition of their probation or parole.

“I believed that federal funding was stable, and based on that assumption, I made some big decisions for myself,” K wrote. “I rented an apartment and bought a new car.”

The cuts also create trickle-down effects. AmeriCorps slashed $400 million in grant funding this past spring as part of the Trump administration’s cuts. That means there are fewer resources—and people—to serve justice-impacted communities.

As Open Campus local reporter Adam Echelman wrote for our partner CalMatters, the future of the 32-year-old volunteerism agency is unclear. While Congress approved money for the program's next fiscal year starting Aug. 1, the administration hasn't released those funds yet—and Trump's budget proposal eliminates AmeriCorps entirely after 2026.

Other federal programs that benefit incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people are also under threat. Natalie Yahr, one of our pathways reporters at Wisconsin Watch, found that workforce and adult education programs that provide job training and literacy instruction—including programs that educate people incarcerated in prisons and jails—are losing funding. The Trump administration froze $715 million in adult education funds nationwide, threatening programs that help adults complete high school, learn English, and improve their literacy skills.

Christi Tilson (seated) receives assistance from her supervisor, Carla James, on May 7, 2025, at John Boner Neighborhood Center in Indianapolis. Tilson is a participant in a free job training program from Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana for adults ages 55 and older. Credit: Richard Sitler for Mirror Indy

Similarly, Claire Rafford, our reporter at Mirror Indy, explored the impact of eliminating the federal Senior Community Service Employment Program, which helps low-income adults over 55 learn job skills through digital literacy training and career coaching. In Indiana alone, the program serves 31 counties, and uncertainty over funding has already forced the state workforce development department to tell some workers not to report to their job sites while waiting for already-approved federal money.

Program participants include Christi Tilson, who was 60 when she got out of prison after serving four years. The program helped her gain digital literacy skills and find employment. "I was 60, coming out into the world with nothing," she told Claire. "I had to figure out how to live in recovery."

The senior employment initiative and other adult education programs are among dozens of federally funded programs the Trump administration wants to get rid of in an effort to curb what it sees as wasteful government spending.

At the end of June, Jason Gonzales, our reporter at Chalkbeat Colorado, also reported that Trump's budget proposal would also eliminate all funding for TRIO programs, which serve 870,000 high school and college students nationwide from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, and first-generation students. TRIO is a resource that many formerly incarcerated students benefit from, as they often fall into one or more of these groups.

But there's one bright spot. Buried in the mammoth legislation that Congress passed in early July is something that might benefit formerly incarcerated people in the future: Workforce Pell grants. These new grants let people use federal aid for short-term job training programs—8 to 14 weeks instead of traditional two-year degrees. People who have already earned a bachelor’s degree are also eligible.

"When you're coming out of jail, you don't have two years," Roger Stanford, president of Western Technical College in Wisconsin, told Natalie for Wisconsin Watch. "If we could turn around and say, 'We can take you right from the jail and give you 10 weeks and put you into a job that has life-sustaining wages,’ that helps (lower) recidivism.”

Read K’s full essay here.

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Interested in reaching people who care about higher education in prisons? Get in touch at sales@opencampusmedia.org or request our media kit.

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Students find belonging in a Michigan prison

Charlotte West — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 23:33:07 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about the future of postsecondary education in prisons. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here are the highlights:

Artist Alvin Smith worked together with his fellow students in the Hope-Western Prison Education Program in Michigan to put together this series of reflections on what it meant to see the college community embracing its students upon release. Congratulations to Alvin and eight other men who graduated last month as part of Hope-Western’s first bachelor’s cohort!
Check out the Q1 print edition of College Inside that we distribute inside to 1500 incarcerated readers across the country.
It’s conference planning season again. System-impacted people can submit session proposals for the annual Rise Up Conference (Sept. 8-9) until July 18. The Alliance for Higher Education in Prison is also accepting session proposals for the virtual Incarcerated Scholars Conference (Oct. 21-22) until July 15.
ICYMI: We teamed up with the Prisoncast! team at our partner WBEZ Chicago to offer a rare glimpse into the opaque bureaucracy of the prison education waitlist.

What it means to belong to a college community

The first cohort of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program graduated at the end of June 2025. Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Corrections.

Late last year, Joe Cedillo and Richard Nelson stepped out of the gates of Muskegon Correctional Facility in Michigan after a combined 63 years of incarceration.

Their freedom not only meant something to them, it also inspired their fellow students in the joint bachelor’s program that Hope College and Western Theological Seminary offer at the prison. The two faith-based colleges partner to provide a liberal arts education to 76 men — including nine who graduated at the end of June — incarcerated at Muskegon.

What moved these students most wasn’t just seeing their classmates walking through the gates — it was witnessing, in photographs, college faculty and staff waiting in the parking lot to welcome them home. Artist and writer Alvin Smith, who was among last month’s graduates and a frequent contributor to College Inside, worked with his fellow students to put together this collection of reflections on that transformative moment.

Read the full story here.

“For the first time in a very long time, you trusted.”

“Untitled.” Oil on canvas by Alvin Smith, 2024.

Imagine a life where the only people you trust look and think like you, and live on the same block in the neighborhood where you grew up. Imagine that anyone who doesn’t resemble you gets met with disdain.

This icy way of viewing outsiders didn’t start with you. Think back to the adults in your life, the way they vehemently distrusted anyone they didn’t know, especially those who looked different. Remember answering the knock on the door and informing the social worker, the insurance agent, the police officer: “My parents ain’t home.”

You carried that distrust into school, leaving the teacher to wonder why they couldn’t reach you. Meanwhile, the people you did feel safe to trust were forced to live less than stellar lives; they had their own issues with trust. You followed their example. You got in trouble. Before long, you ended up with a probation officer, whom you also distrusted. Your cold distrust, their impatience: the combination rendered them ineffective at preventing your unnatural trajectory to prison.

Once behind bars, you found even less incentive to trust anyone outside of your circle. Hopelessness set in. The ice thickened.

Then something happened. You were invited to participate in a seminary program inside your prison, alongside a motley crew of other mistrustful men. You were suspicious of the program organizers, of course you were. Soon the truth of who these people were would show through, you thought. They can’t be who and what they say they are. And who provides a quality education without strings attached?

But a phrase they kept repeating stuck in your mind: “We are here for you.” We kept hearing it again and again in the classroom, and in our interactions with staff.

Soon enough, a miracle occurred. Two of your classmates were granted parole after being incarcerated for 25 and 38 years, respectively. Both were initially given life sentences. You saw the pictures of both of them out in the parking lot with their families. The ice began to thaw.

You were moved by their accomplishment: They had become members of the seminary program, that special community. In the pictures, those men were surrounded by directors, professors, student advisors, administrators and others who welcomed your brothers back into society just as they said they would.

Your defenses continued to melt — and not just yours, but other students in the program. The melting is a kind of freedom. It allowed you and your peers to commit fully to the education process. You knew you were not alone. For the first time in a very long time, you trusted.

— Alvin Smith

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Interested in reaching people who care about higher education in prisons? Get in touch at sales@opencampusmedia.org or request our media kit.

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A look (and listen) inside the dreaded prison education waitlist

Charlotte West — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 15:50:56 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about the intersection of higher education and criminal justice. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here are the highlights:

Listen to my audio collab with Juan Hernandez about his 18-year struggle to earn his GED in Illinois, produced by our local partner WBEZ.
We’re extending the deadline for responses to our College Inside survey about people’s experiences with college and career during reentry — and the information they get about those things — until July 3. If you are formerly incarcerated, please take a few minutes and fill it out.

One Illinois man’s 18-year journey to get his GED

Juan Hernandez spent more than half of his life inside the Illinois Department of Corrections fighting to get his GED. Documents provided by Juan Hernandez. Collage by Emily Jenkins for Open Campus.

Listen to the audio story over at WBEZ.

Juan Hernandez was a teenager when he was sentenced to prison. He was 32 when he finally completed his high school education.

The nearly two decades in between tell a story of bureaucratic barriers, arbitrary rules, and one man’s refusal to give up on earning his education.

It’s not unusual for people locked up in the Illinois Department of Corrections to wait years to get into programming, such as GED or college classes. That’s especially true for people serving long sentences for serious crimes, as the state prioritizes enrollment for people who will be released from prison sooner. Hernandez was sentenced to 45 years as a teenager.

But what makes Hernandez’s story unique is the paper trail he kept throughout his fight — the letters he wrote to prison officials asking for access to education, and the responses he received. The documents, which he asked a friend to post on Instagram, offer a rare window into the often-opaque process of prison education waitlists that keep thousands of incarcerated people from accessing education inside.

Juan Hernandez wrestled with the Illinois prison system’s bureaucracy for years to try and earn his high school equivalency. Juan Hernandez/Open Campus

“I realized education might be a way forward when the administration was adamant in keeping it from me,” Hernandez wrote to WBEZ and Open Campus from Dixon Correctional Center, where he’s currently locked up. At one prison, Juan wrote that he was assigned to a cell house with 1,000 other men — all of whom were barred from education simply because of where they lived.

Officials called the policy only to allow certain units access to classes “an administrative decision” with no further explanation. When he filed a formal prisoner complaint with IDOC — known as a grievance — a prison officer found his complaint “moot.”

When letters and grievances failed to get him access to education, Hernandez escalated to a hunger strike — one of the drastic steps some incarcerated people turn to when other avenues are exhausted. That ended with prison staff attempting to force-feed him, he wrote. He was eventually transferred to a different prison, where the education administrator told him his test scores helped his case – but his release date did not.

The administrator also warned him: “Do NOT go to SEG!” — shorthand for administrative segregation, otherwise known as “the hole,” which is similar to solitary confinement used as punishment for people in prison who get into trouble. Months later, Hernandez was finally enrolled in GED classes and, true to a promise he made in one of his letters, passed the test on his first attempt.

It’s been seven years since then. Hernandez is still waiting to get into college.

Editor’s note: In a statement, an Illinois Department of Corrections spokeswoman said increased educational staffing since 2018 has allowed more people in prison to complete the GED program, and that wait times have “decreased significantly.” The average wait time to get into GED classes is less than three months, she said.

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Interested in reaching people who care about higher education in prisons? Get in touch at sales@opencampusmedia.org or request our media kit.

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College Inside wants to hear from you

Charlotte West — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 20:14:29 +0000

A biweekly newsletter about the intersection of higher education and criminal justice. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Happy Friday! This is a little different than our normal College Inside emails, but I wanted to send a quick note on this Friday the 13th about some updates here at Open Campus.

I want to remind our subscribers that our survey on college and career during reentry closes on Monday, June 16. If you are formerly incarcerated, please take a few minutes to fill it out. We want to hear directly from you about your experiences with education and training inside, as well as with navigating college and the labor market after you came home. This survey will help inform our coverage and content in the future as we try to help close the information gap for incarcerated readers.

I’ve had several folks ask me if system-impacted folks were involved with the survey design. The answer is yes. We are working with Jobs for the Future’s Center for Justice & Economic Advancement on this project, and they have a currently incarcerated employee who reviewed the questions before we launched the survey. The need to hear directly from people with lived experience is exactly why we are sending doing this. We are hoping it will be a first step towards creating more avenues for readers.

If you are an administrator, educator, or correctional official, we would also like to hear from you about how federal policies are impacting your prison education programs. We’re carefully tracking issues such as the cuts to Americorps funding and the proposal to restrict part-time Pell enrollment, which would have a disproportionate impact on incarcerated students. While the latter seems to be on pause for now, things change rapidly in our nation’s capital. Please reach out!

In other news, we also sent out the latest print issue of College Inside to over 1,000 incarcerated readers earlier this week. Thousands more will be able to access it on Edovo. This issue features two stories by reporters in our local reporting network. The cover story is Maddy Franklin's piece for PublicSource about "Hamlet" at Allegheny County Jail. This issue also includes Sneha Dey's reporting for The Texas Tribune on Lee College's reentry preparation program in Texas prisons. Other content includes my stories about cultural education in Oregon and Hawaii, the suspension of Auburn University's bachelor's program, as well as a profile of an Illinois man studying for a law degree from behind bars in Minnesota. If you are a prison educator or librarian, please download the PDF to share with your students and patrons.

Finally, tune into WBEZ’s Prisoncast! this Sunday, June 15 from 2-4pm Central for a special broadcast airing on public radio stations across Illinois and online at WBEZ.org. It’s a radio show made with and for people affected by incarceration in Illinois. I’m really excited that a story we’ve been working on for months will finally hit the airwaves. Because of one man’s meticulous paper trail, I’ll take you inside the bureaucratic nightmare of education waiting lists. Learn more at WBEZ.org/prisoncast.

We hope to hear from you!

Thanks for your support.

Charlotte West

P.S. In case you missed it, check out my latest story on how San Francisco State University is educating its campus and community about the realities of reentry.

Let’s connect

Interested in reaching people who care about higher education in prisons? Get in touch at sales@opencampusmedia.org or request our media kit.

College Inside

From prison tablets to Cleveland kitchens

EDWINS built a reentry program in Cleveland. It’s expanded its renowned culinary training nationwide.

News & views

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The Magic of Gathering in Prison

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How lived experience meets academic knowledge in a prison classroom

A Q&A with Reiko Hillyer: ‘You represent us’

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A message of hope and activism from Sister Prejean

Sister Prejean celebrates 15 years since Illinois abolished capital punishment

A new report about 'learning life all over again' during reentry

‘Second chance’ bonds show promise. Few Wisconsin businesses use them.

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For those with a record, 'checking the box' can be a barrier to education

Northwestern Prison Education Program holds first graduation since Stateville closure

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The HBCU president making the case for college in prison

‘We are not entering foreign territory — we are extending our mission’

The history of tech in Washington state prisons

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An art course designed in prison

An incarcerated artist helped create a college art course — and a scholarship to pay for it

News & views

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'If they ever open the door, watch what I can do'

David Carrillo spent three decades dreaming about getting out of prison. Here's what he's built after two years of freedom.

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Earning a degree behind bars is difficult. Finding housing after release can be harder.

Formerly incarcerated graduates face another hurdle on the outside: stable housing

‘They ban books by Black authors. Then they tell us to celebrate Black History Month.’

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State coalitions emerge as key infrastructure for higher education in prison

How do you get everyone on the same page?

New & views

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The Recordkeeping Problem Keeping People Locked Up Longer

‘No Good Time For You’

An inside look at college in Indiana Women’s Prison

News & Views

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One prisoner's fight to expand work release jobs in Wisconsin

A century after pioneering work release, Wisconsin corrections officials don't track how many prisoners participate

Work release jobs are scarce, prisoners say

Officials and prisoners tout benefits

No statewide data available

Prisoner pushes for more jobs

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This class helps incarcerated men learn about fatherhood

‘Our most important goal is to create better fathers, and employment is one part of that.’

Fatherhood 101

Fatherhood, inside

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Parole boards say education matters. Their denials tell a different story.

Illinois edition of College Inside out now

The 2026-2027 FAFSA for incarcerated students now available

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The waiting game

For every incarcerated student in Illinois prisons, another waits their turn.

How long’s the wait? Depends on geography

Waitlist time down for high school-level courses

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_{Sister Prejean celebrates 15 years since Illinois abolished capital punishment}