September’s Shared Offering is the Education Justice Project (EJP), at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Under the inspiration and direction of Dr. Rebecca
Ginsburg (Professor of Landscape Architecture), the EJP offers upper-level
university courses and related activities to incarcerated people in Illinois.
The related activities include tutoring, an on-site resource room, bilingual
Spanish-English instruction, book clubs, a speaker series, and support for a
network of families of EJP students. The program currently operates at the
Danville Correctional Facility for men. Nearly all staff in the program are
trained volunteers from the university and the local community.
The program is grounded in a well substantiated body of research. College-in-prison
programs reduce arrest, conviction, and reincarceration rates among released
prisoners. College-in-prison programs are also linked to fewer disciplinary
incidents within prison and thus safer environments for prisoners and staff
alike. College-in-prison programs also have benefits for inmates’ families and,
hence, their communities. The strongest predictor of whether a given person
will attend college is whether her or his parents did. So, when an incarcerated
person receives a college education, his or her children are more likely to
pursue their own educations. In spite of these significant benefits, there has
been a precipitous drop in college-in-prison programs around the country. There
were over seven hundred degree-granting programs at their height, in the early
1990s. In 1994 the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act eliminated the
use of Pell Grants for prisoners, and most prison college programs closed,
including Illinois’ BA-granting programs. Bachelor degrees have not been
offered in Illinois prisons since 2002.
The EJP is a vital program, seeking long-term responses to chronic structural problems like
crime and incarceration, both of which disproportionately affect the poor and
people of color in our society. Please check out the website http://www.educationjustice.net/ or ask Jennifer
Greene for further information.
