New "Since You Asked" column
Prison Policy Initiative updates for August 22, 2019 Showing how mass incarceration harms communities and our national welfare
Since You Asked: How did the 1994 crime bill affect prison education programs?
by Wendy Sawyer
Journalists and policymakers frequently ask us to answer tricky but important questions about the criminal justice system. Until now, however, many of our answers to these common questions have gone unpublished, gathering dust in our email archives. This post is the first in what we anticipate will be an ongoing "Since You Asked" series that makes our answers to these important questions public.
Q: How many people participated in college-in-prison programs before and after the 1994 crime bill? (And how many participate in prison education programming today?)
A: To understand the drop in college participation in prisons following the 1994 "crime bill," it's important to know that most in-prison college programs, unlike colleges and universities in the "free world," largely depend on funding from the Pell Grants program and other federal aid programs. This is largely because incarcerated people are overwhelmingly poor [[link removed]] and can neither afford college tuition nor make generous gifts as alumni.
According to a historical overview [[link removed]] by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), prisons "witnessed a surge in demand for college courses" after the passage of the Higher Education Act of 1965, a law that greatly expanded federal aid for college participation nationwide.
"By 1982, 350 college-in-prison programs enrolled almost 27,000 prisoners (9 percent of the nation's prison population), primarily through Pell Grants...By the early 1990s, it is estimated that 772 programs were operating in 1,287 correctional facilities across the nation."
A 1992 amendment made people serving life sentences without parole and those sentenced to death ineligible to receive Pell Grants. Then, the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act banned everyone incarcerated in prisons from receiving Pell aid, even though these grants made up less than 1 percent of total Pell spending.
"By 1997," the AEI briefing continues, "it is estimated that only eight college-in-prison programs existed in the United States." The remaining programs were those that received financial and volunteer support from other sources.
According to the American Historical Association, [[link removed]] "States followed by further blocking access to funds through regional programs." In 2005, the New York Times Magazine wrote [[link removed]] that there were "about a dozen" prison college-degree programs, "four of them in New York State."
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 2003 publication Education and Correctional Populations [[link removed]] includes some data that reflects these changes (see Table 4). In 1991, 13.9% of people in state prisons, and 18.9% of those in federal prisons, had taken a college course since admission.
By 1997, these numbers had dropped to 9.9% for people in state prisons, and 12.9% in federal prisons. The 2004 BJS Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities [[link removed]] (variable V2503) shows that the downward trend continued: In 2004, just 7.3% of respondents in state prisons had taken a college-level class since admission.
More recently, results from a 2014 study [[link removed]] of people in prison found that 2% of respondents had completed an Associate's degree while incarcerated, and 1% had completed a Bachelor's degree or higher. Notably, 58% of respondents reported that they had not completed any further education while incarcerated.
But these statistics do not reflect a lack of interest in higher education among people in prison: To the contrary, 40% of respondents to the survey said that they would like to enroll in an Associate's or Bachelor's degree program, and an additional 29% wanted to enroll in a postsecondary certificate program.
Nor are most people in prison unqualified for such programs: A recent report [[link removed]] from the Vera Institute of Justice and Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality analyzed the same survey results and found that "the majority of incarcerated people are academically eligible for postsecondary-level courses."
As we've previously found, [[link removed]] educational exclusion is a strong predictor of incarceration in the U.S. But federal and state governments are far from powerless to repair the harm that results. Restoring Pell Grants to incarcerated people would make approximately 463,000 people in prison eligible for free college courses.
It's time for the government to not only restore this critical aid, but expand it.
Please support our work [[link removed]]
Our work is made possible by private donations. Can you help us keep going? We can accept tax-deductible gifts online [[link removed]] or via paper checks sent to PO Box 127 Northampton MA 01061. Thank you!
Other news: Read more: Education among formerly incarcerated people [[link removed]]
What comes after the school-to-prison pipeline? In our 2018 report Getting Back on Course [[link removed]], we show that people leaving prison rarely get the chance to make up the education they've missed: 25% have no educational credentials at all, 33% have a GED rather than a traditional high school degree, and less than 4% have a college degree.
Read our full report. [[link removed]]
We're hiring - come work with us! [[link removed]]
Do you want to shape the future of the criminal justice reform movement? We're hiring a Development Director (or Development and Comms Associate, depending on experience) as well as a Policy Fellow and Equal Justice Works fellow. For more information, see our Jobs page. [[link removed]]
Please support our work [[link removed]]
Our work is made possible by private donations. Can you help us keep going? We can accept tax-deductible gifts online [[link removed]] or via paper checks sent to PO Box 127 Northampton MA 01061. Thank you!
Our other newsletters Ending prison gerrymandering ( archives [[link removed]]) Criminal justice research library ( archives) [[link removed]]
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