“This is actually a two-year pilot program,” says Cathy Crimmins Lechowicz, program manager of the center who has spearheaded an education outreach for 18 Cheshire inmates taking courses in sociology and English essay writing last semester and nonlab chemistry and introduction to government courses this semester. “Our hope is that the inmates — since we are a liberal arts institution — will really be able to experience the range of liberal arts.”

Lechowicz says that, even though Wesleyan’s prison courses have proved popular among the inmates, the program’s future may depend on whether additional funding can be secured.

“As it stands now, we really don’t know what is going to happen,” she says. “Obviously, we are willing to explore any route that might give us support.”

In Indiana, prison education courses offered by ISU are contracted out by the state’s Department of Corrections (IDOC). Due to a recent restructuring of the department’s education offerings, Ivy Tech Community College will provide GED, literary and vocational education to inmates, while the university will continue to offer two- and four-year degree programs.

Such programs have remained operational in Indiana, says corrections department spokesman Doug Garrison, because lawmakers like the lower recidivism rates they produce.

“They are seen as being very beneficial in that regard,” he says.

According to IDOC data, the state’s overall recidivism rate dropped from 37.8 in 2007 to 37.4 percent in 2008, marking the third consecutive year the rate declined. But for former inmates with college degrees that rate drops to 21.2 percent.

Similar patterns have also impressed legislators in California, where the recidivism rate among released inmates who had participated in prison education programs at one institution — Ironwood State Prison — was 20 percent, compared with 70 percent for the general prison population.

“That proves that these programs have a positive and lasting impact,” says Vicki Attaway, the associate dean of distance learning and noncredit programs at Palo Verde College in Blythe, Calif. Palo Verde offers prison education programs to more than 1,000 inmates at 23 correctional institutions in California.