WASHINGTON, D.C. – Even though providing higher education to incarcerated individuals is a “no-brainer” from a public safety perspective, the current political climate makes it impractical to seek passage of legislation to restore Pell grants to those behind bars.
That was the position of speakers and organizers of a panel discussion on Monday titled “Pell Grants for Public Safety: How Higher Education in Prison Leads to Safer Communities.”
“When we think about the importance of higher education in society as a whole, there’s no controversy. Everybody in this country thinks that college is a good thing, both for individuals and society,” said panelist Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a D.C.-based organization that advocates for criminal justice reform.
“Yet, when it comes to thinking about (higher education in) prison, all of a sudden we throw everything up in the air,” Mauer continued. “We don’t know if it works or it’s a good idea or anything like that. There’s a significant disconnect.”
Although research already has shown that higher education reduces recidivism, Mauer said that congressional leaders still need fresh evidence so they can make the case for incarcerated individuals to regain eligibility for Pell grants—something that hasn’t been available to prisoners since the GOP led an effort to ban Pell grants to prisoners in 1994, leading to the elimination of all but a few college programs in prisons.
“We know that the prohibition that Congress placed on Pell grants (to prisoners) had nothing to do with research, nothing to do with financial priorities, and everything to do with politics,” Mauer said, noting that Pell grants to prisoners only represented one-tenth of 1 percent of all Pell grant money at the time that they were banned.
The Pell Grants for Public Safety event was organized by the Education from the Inside Out Coalition and co-hosted by the Open Society Foundations.
