As Congress’s stimulus package heads to the president’s desk for signing, the legislation has major implications for students in prison.
Notably, the bill pushed forward on Dec. 21 moves to end a 26-year ban on Pell grants for incarcerated students, a major victory for students and their advocates after years of activism.
The reversal “will increase access to opportunity for people leaving prison, in terms of their career paths and their ability to take care of themselves and their families post-release,” said Margaret diZerega, who directs the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit for criminal justice reform. “Really it’s an equity issue also, given the disproportionate number of Black and brown people in prison.”
In recent years, restoring Pell grants to incarcerated students has enjoyed rare bipartisan support. The Second Chance Pell Experiment – a pilot program allowing some incarcerated students to access Pell grant funding – began under former President Barack Obama and expanded under President Donald J. Trump.
Thanks to the program, “there are more members of Congress who are interacting with the colleges, the corrections departments and the students in these programs,” diZerega said. “We saw several members attend graduations in prisons or go visit prison programs. And I think being proximate to the students and the faculty and the corrections staff that make these programs possible, people see how transformative they are.”
Historically, incarcerated students lost access to Pell grants as a part of the 1994 crime bill. The legislation wasn’t only a hit to college affordability for students in prison. It also cut down their options for higher education programs.
Without federal funding toward tuition, “the drop in the availability of college programs in prison was dramatic,” said Dr. Bradley Custer, senior policy analyst for postsecondary education for the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank. The programs that persisted found other sources of funding – like private funds or state funds – but now “we have this opportunity to have a steady, secure stream of federal funding that students can rely on, just like non-incarcerated students with financial need can rely on.”
