JESSUP, Md. — Prison education programs like the one that Goucher College runs at a medium-security prison here could help reduce crime and give inmates a better chance at making a successful reentry to society.
That was the message that top Obama administration officials delivered recently as they invited colleges and universities to submit proposals to participate in a new pilot program that restores federal Pell Grants to prisoners on a limited basis.
“When you provide postsecondary education in an institution, you provide individuals with opportunities to better themselves and to better their communities,” said U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
“To have a second chance is something that should be part and parcel of who we are as American people,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. “That’s exactly what this pilot program is about.”
Lynch and Duncan made their statements at the Maryland Correctional Institution-Jessup — or MCI-J — to announce the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program.
Although Congress banned Pell Grants to prisoners in 1994 through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program would restore Pell Grants to incarcerated individuals on an “experimental” basis.
“We absolutely have the legal authority to do this,” Duncan said during a press conference in the visitor’s room at MCI-J, citing a provision of the Higher Education Act that allows the Education Department to allow a limited number of institutions to participate in “experiments to test alternative methods” for administering federal financial aid.
