In conclusion
Students frequently encounter dead ends, even in California, where inmate access to technology and research tools is superior to the norm.
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Every state and the Federal Bureau of Prisons has attempted to increase access to higher education since Pell Grants became available to those seeking degrees from prison.
However, none of them have succeeded in establishing an educational setting that encourages college-level research. Inmates in some jurisdictions are still prohibited from using nearly all forms of technology, so they must rely on textbooks and paper assignments to get by. Some don’t provide computers to students, thus they are forced to write term papers using tablets without external keyboards. Internet access becomes a barrier when pupils have the appropriate technology because the potential for misuse outweighs the instructional value.
One of the best strategies to lower the likelihood of reoffending following release from prison is to earn a degree. Because educational advancement is linked to getting a solid job, some researchers have observed abrupt declines in the recidivism rate, as this indicator is known.
However, education’s potential to reduce recidivism conflicts with the United States’ harsh attitude to punishment. The director of Cal State Los Angeles’ prison education program, Bidhan Roy, has researched the restorative approach in Norwegian jails and draws attention to the differences.
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According to Roy, the idea in Norway is that serving time is a form of punishment and that the prison’s role is to get inmates ready to live next to you again. That way of thinking about it alters the purpose of your work there. Why wouldn’t you provide internet access and research skills?
Slow progress
Students were required to complete all of their work on paper when Roy began creating the Cal State L.A. Prison Graduation Initiative approximately ten years ago. Roy would assign inmates to an on-campus peer who could visit the library on their behalf and print off papers for Roy to bring back to the prison, providing them with a means of conducting research. He pre-loaded scholarly papers onto thumb drives for students to peruse offline when they began utilizing desktop computers from penitentiary classrooms. Since the autumn of 2023, his pupils have had access to EBSCO, a corporation that compiles online research databases, which allows them to search a far larger universe of scholarly publications online. Students at every prison in the state now have access to EBSCO thanks to a purchase made by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Roy’s classes have gradually gotten better for both teachers and students. He claimed that grading handwritten essays was a nightmare in and of itself. Additionally, students have developed into academics with the ability to determine their own study agendas—a degree of independence that stands in stark contrast to their otherwise extremely regimented internal lives.
According to Roy, that leads to empowerment and the acquisition of both broad and specific research skills.
Students still bump into walls.
Before enrolling in the bachelor’s degree program Roy directs, 42-year-old Suzanne Carlson earned two associate degrees after earning her GED while incarcerated. She just had textbooks and paper when she first started attending lessons.
She described it as terrible. She said she likes and appreciates her laptop at the California Institution for Women in Chino, but the library here is quite little compared to what we require, and the EBSCO database only allows her access to pre-approved resources. She finds herself hoping she could complete her work with a Google equivalent.
Carlson stated that she is certain there is a method to forbid illegal activity while yet allowing more access to the internet for those who are incarcerated. “I understand why [that’s not available] and I wouldn’t want to open any avenues for criminal behavior to happen,” she added.
Other states have actually figured it out. Students in Kansas, Ohio, and Wisconsin have access to firewalled internet alternatives on a different network, which protects the prison network while allowing students to view websites that are pertinent to their studies.
Ruth Delaney, director of the Unlocking Potential Initiative at the Vera Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to criminal justice, expressed her desire to see more states follow suit. Since 2012, Delaney’s team has collaborated with education officials and correctional departments in the majority of states to expand high-quality post-secondary education in prisons. Pell Grants were fully restored to low-income students after their early results prompted the Obama Administration to permit some of them to apply even while they were incarcerated.During the first Trump administration, Congress approved the expansion, which went into effect in 2023.
Even in the best of situations, however, incarcerated students are generally excluded from accessing a large portion of the human knowledge stored on the internet. Prisons use whitelists, where facilities identify which websites users can access while blocking the rest of the internet. This is in contrast to K–12 schools, which use filters to limit students’ access to harmful or inappropriate websites while allowing them to browse freely otherwise.
In order to preserve safety and order, both strategies prevent students from visiting more websites than are required. The Markup, which is now a part of CalMatters, discovered that high schools blocked students from accessing Wikipedia, sex education websites, LGBTQ resources, and a variety of other websites they looked up while doing their assignments. According to Delaney, the whitelist strategy results in a severely restricted internet in jails.
The restrictions rob jailed pupils of their educational opportunity. This spring, Carlson completed her bachelor’s degree, but she is concerned that the degree won’t help her advance as much as she would like.
Carlson stated, “I don’t want to have stunted growth because of things like this when I enter the workforce, go to apply for a job, and work next to others.”
National trends
The Vera Institute published a report last year that evaluated each state’s progress on 15 parameters related to the quality, equity, and scope of prison education. Technology, scholarly research, and library access were two indicators of quality. Although California scored well on both metrics, indicating that its system provided sufficient access, Carlson’s study experiences highlight the limitations of sufficient access.
The Vera Institute identified technology as an area that needs improvement nationwide. Just 17 states received the designation of having sufficient technology to close the digital gap and improve educational quality. When it comes to making academic research resources and library services accessible, only 12 met the same standards.
A amendment to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was ratified by the US in 2016, made internet access a fundamental human right that is linked to the right to education.
According to Delaney, prison officials frequently worry that allowing kids to use the internet could result in violence or other negative consequences both within and outside the facility. However, she said that although the worry is real, it seems exaggerated.
According to Delaney, there is ample proof that inmates who attend college do not engage in the kinds of activities you should be concerned about. Prison education programs are only available to students who have demonstrated excellent behavior; even slight transgressions might result in expulsion. They are serious about the opportunity.
A prison version of EBSCO’s research resource database, which contains over a billion items, including searchable academic articles and media archives, was developed with assistance from Joe Tragert, vice president of product strategy at EBSCOed, EBSCO’s education division. Although inmates can perform their own searches and seek access to papers, they are only permitted to read and download the resources after they have been approved. Tragert claimed to hear of people’s commitment to getting their degrees.
According to Tragert, this is their ticket to either leaving and staying out or simply getting by during the day.
Limited opportunity
This May, Theresa Torricellas, 66, graduated from the California Institution for Women’s Roy program with a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies. She claimed that although EBSCO was a wealth of materials, she encountered obstacles when attempting to investigate conditions in Palestine last summer.
At the time, Torricellas stated, “A lot of the information that I’m interested in is just not in the media.” The media seldom ever covers it. According to her, she most likely would have conducted her research using social media. That wasn’t an option on the inside.
While concentrating on her schoolwork, she also had issues with Wi-Fi access. Wi-Fi is limited to specific public spaces and nearby cells that are able to receive the signal. She was lucky for a while, but she didn’t realize she would be losing her Wi-Fi access when she went across the hall to a cell with more sunlight. It wasn’t until it was too late that she realized it.
During the previous academic year, she would either connect into her course software to retrieve assignment data or search EBSCO for the materials she required in the noisy dayroom before returning to her room to continue working offline. The prison-issued laptops’ insufficient storage space disrupted this routine.
According to Torricellas, I downloaded so many EBSCO articles that my laptop broke down. Although the more recent laptops provided by the prison have greater space, another participant in the education program stated that she experienced the same issue after downloading just two large PDFs.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is increasing student access to research materials while introducing modern hardware. Students are gradually receiving access to JSTOR, another searchable research database, in addition to EBSCO. The JSTOR database is accessible to inmate students enrolled in local college programs, such as Roy’s, thanks to the college’s current licensing, which means it has already been paid for.
According to Stacy Burnett, director of the JSTOR Access in Prison Initiative, many institutions use a system similar to EBSCO’s in which each student’s request for a document must be reviewed and approved by someone. Others have used a mass approval tool to increase access. A whole discipline has occasionally been bulk-approved by state prison systems; in Colorado, officials bulk-approved every item in JSTOR.
According to Burnett, a pupil can read anything that is on there. After an issue, they can limit access, but according to Burnett, that hasn’t happened yet.
Carlson was astounded by the women’s lack of education when she arrived to prison. She attended a demanding high school where she gained reading, writing, and research skills. None of those skills were learned by others. They can continue their education indoors with the help of EBSCO and JSTOR. However, Carlson claimed that the lack of access to internet research just exacerbates the initial lack of information that many women received.
Carlson stated that I believe the doors should be open in the field of education.
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