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JUNE 2005

Education Behind Bars: Part II of a Series
Interview with Dr. Michelle Fine

By Nazneen Malik

“College in prison is a powerful intervention and relatively cost effective,” says Dr. Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Urban Education, and Women’s Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

In a recently published report, Changing Minds, Dr. Fine, in collaboration with women in prison at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility (BHCF), found that college in prison programs radically reduced recidivism rates from 30 percent for women who did not attend college while in prison to 7 percent for women who did. A cost-benefit analysis further revealed that providing inmates access to higher education is fiscally far more efficient than incurring the inflated rates of re-incarceration and diminished employability. Specifically, the report estimated savings of about nine million dollars for every 100 prisoners, over a period of four years.

In addition to fiscal savings, however, college in prisons programs have far-reaching implications that extend well beyond the inmates themselves. “The best predictor of a child’s education is his or her mother’s education,” says Fine, and “educating [incarcerated] mothers is one way to dramatically interrupt the cycle of imprisonment of the next generation.”

Instability is an enormous assault on child development, says Fine. Children with incarcerated mothers are in need of tremendous support because not only are their families disrupted but many children, especially those of elementary school age, are bounced between foster homes and have to deal with the stigma of a parent in prison. College in prison programs allow inmates to set a positive role model for their children in spite of their circumstances or environment.

Furthermore, college in prison programs provide inmates with “a kind of intellectual stretching” and community building which enables them to have confidence in themselves, their abilities, and to become functional members of society. Some of the women Dr. Fine interviewed, post-release, described their college in prison experiences as teaching them “to recognize their own intellectual signatures, to persist, revise, and imagine a world bigger and more interesting then the one they had been accustomed to, and to face their weaknesses.”

However, not all inmates come to prison with a sufficient educational background that allows them to jump into college level courses. In fact, the average inmate has about 10.6 years of schooling with the Math and English proficiency of a sixth grader.

There are a disproportionate number of high school drop-outs in prison, says Fine. The number of men and women without high school diplomas or GEDs ranges from 50 to 80 percent depending on the prison. She also mentions a growing concern that high stakes testing may result in an increase in drop-out rates thereby limiting the economic and social options available to young people and potentially increasing their involvement in criminal activities.

Although many prisons do not offer college programs to inmates, they do offer basic adult education and literacy, GED classes, and vocational programs. “Evidence of vocational training is certainly better than no education,” says Dr. Fine, “but it is not as powerful as a liberal arts education and I think that is true particularly for women.” We need federal and state funds for college in prison and pre-college programs.”

The program at BHCF serves as a model for other colleges that are considering developing programs with other prison facilities. Bard College, for example, has already initiated a similar consortium with a set of men’s prisons and there is a consortium of colleges in New Jersey that aims to work with the women’s prisons in their area. Therefore, the climate seems to be changing, and although progress is slow, it is progress nonetheless.#

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