#93 What is the Bard Prison Initiative?

Did you know that America puts more people in prison than any other nation on Earth?

As of two years ago, there were 1,230,100 people in U.S. prisons.

And states have been spending more on prison on recent decades, as “tough on crime” policies have put more people in prison with lengthier sentences.

Although some people believe that criminals should be locked up and removed from society, others have a more positive view of the incarcerated.

What about providing educational resources and opportunities to these people so they can improve themselves and prepare for a life after prison?

Consider this: spending money to educate these people while they’re incarcerated can save taxpayers money in the long run by helping these people to leave the life of crime that brought them into prison.

Today’s newsletter is about one of America’s best-known prison education programs: the Bard Prison Initiative.

The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) provides college education to people in New York State prisons. It currently has 400 students across seven prisons in New York.

Since it was created in 1999 by a group of students at Bard College, the BPI has granted more than 50,000 college credits and over 760 degrees.

BPI graduates are less likely to be re-arrested or return to prison after their incarceration than the average inmate.

The recidivism rate for prisoners who earn a Bachelor's degree through the BPI is just 3.1%, compared to a national recidivism rate of over 60%.

History: The story of how the BPI started is fascinating.

It began as a response to the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the “tough on crime” legislation that was sponsored by then-Senator Joe Biden.

In addition to empowering law enforcement and issuing tougher sentencing guidelines, that Act overturned a provision of the 1965 Higher Education Act that allowed prison inmates to receive Pell Grants scholarships if they pursued higher education while in prison.

This caused a dramatic drop-off in the number of U.S. prisons providing post-secondary education to prisoners, with many prisons dismantling their education programs due to the disappearance of Pell Grant funding.

As a result, the total number of prisons offering these programs nationwide fell from 350 in the early 1990s to under 20 in 2005.

A group of Bard College undergraduate students who were concerned about welfare of prison inmates were able to secure some funding and access to the New York State prison system.

With the help of professors and other volunteers, they were able to establish the first BPI program with 16 students in 2001.

Stories: One BPI alumni, who said that he “hated” school as a young man, described the rigorous and diverse educational program he experienced through the BPI:

Robert Riggs, a graduate of the BPI who went on to attend a Ph.D. program in sociology at NYU, would go on to write an academic paper entitled: Men’s Social Integration after Incarceration: The Role of Organizationally Embedded Prison-Forged Networks.

He described how his experience with the BPI shaped his later scholarship:

Another BPI graduate, Elías Beltrán, is completing a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Cornell. He is also the first BPI graduate to go on to become a BPI faculty member. (see him in the photo below)

Hope: In 2020, Congress ultimately removed that ban on federal Pell Grants for prisoners.

This meant that nearly half a million inmates in state and federal prisons became eligible for the educational grants, potentially enabling a renaissance of prison education around the country — and helping the next generation of incarcerated individuals to pursue education and attempt to build a better life for themselves and their families after their time in prison.

ART OF THE DAY:

Today’s painting is “The Eagle Flies Everyday In My Part Of America” by Leonard Jefferson.

Mr. Jefferson was incarcerated for nearly 40 years before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overruled his sentence of life without parole.

He was released from prison in 2019.

Since his release, his work has been displayed at the RISD Museum, at Brown University, and the University of Pittsburgh.