Muhlenberg College’s ongoing efforts to educate incarcerated individuals recently received a boost indirectly from federal dollars awarded to the City of Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Muhlenberg’s community engagement librarian Jess Denke (left) and psychology professor Dr. Kate Richmond co-lead the college’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program.
The city is one of six awardees taking a share of the $184 million total Distressed Area Recompete Pilot Program investment, authorized under the Chips and Science Act. It will receive about $20 million to create 650 jobs in Franklin Park, Center City, and the Wards.
The Allentown Recompete Plan expects to bring together 38 local partners like Muhlenberg to achieve its objectives, including bringing the neighborhood communities to parity the city-wide average employment by 2030.
Muhlenberg's Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program was awarded about $1 million over five years to expand the initiative.
The program, co-led by Muhlenberg psychology professor Dr. Kate Richmond and community engagement librarian Jess Denke, seeks to leverage education as a tool to end mass incarceration in part by bringing together traditionally enrolled Muhlenberg students and incarcerated individuals as classmates in a semester-long college course.
