Content area
Abstract
Currently, very little is known about the nature, scope, and quality of college-in-prison programs. Particularly given the reinstatement of Pell grants for incarcerated college students in December 2020—after a 26-year long ban—it is timely and urgent to center these issues and examine the educational experiences made available to college students in prison. The present research is a critical qualitative case study of three college-in-prison programs in one southern state in the United States. The study explores the views, experiences, and practices of program faculty and staff, as a means of interrogating the nature and quality of their programs and the educational experiences afforded to incarcerated college students. In particular, the research draws on higher education research and scholarship on student engagement as well as critical scholarship from the field of higher education in prison to examine four key areas: (a) faculty and staff conceptualizations of the purpose of higher education in prison, (b) faculty training, (c) the educational experiences made available to students, and (d) staff and faculty advocacy related to improving the student experience. The study engages in-depth with Ladson-Billing’s (2006) concept of the education debt—and its historical, moral, and economic underpinnings—to provide a critical reading and discussion of findings. It is crucial to undertake a study of this nature not only to advance knowledge about the state of college programming in prisons, but also to identify and challenge potential instances of “better than nothing” education, wherein incarcerated students are systematically exposed to substandard educational experiences (Castro & Gould, 2018).
Data collection consisted of demographic and professional background questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, classroom description worksheets, and documents pertaining to programs and coursework. Four main themes emerged from this research: (a) Faculty and staff in the three programs reinforce, depart from, or challenge correctional conceptualizations of higher education in prison, (b) Faculty training in all three programs fails to go beyond safety and security-related matters, (c) The educational experiences made available in the three programs are (dis)empowering, and (d) Faculty and staff in the three programs advocate for improving the student experience to the extent possible. Ultimately, the study highlights that the three collegein-prison programs in this study—like many across the United States—both contribute to and challenge the education debt.
