As much as 69% of incarcerated people want to enroll in postsecondary education. Over 600,000 people return to the community from incarceration each year.
Yet, only 10 states provide postsecondary educational opportunities that are fully accessible to all incarcerated individuals. And fewer than one in three states is using key federal and state funding pathways to support postsecondary education for people while incarcerated, as well as after release, said a new study.
This could well be one of the main reasons that more than 40% of people returning to the community from incarceration are rearrested within their first year of release. Worse, the unemployment rate among formerly incarcerated people is more than 27%, a figure higher than the U.S. unemployment rate during the Great Depression, said the study by the Justice Center, titled “Laying the Groundwork: How States Can Improve Access to Continued Education for People in The Criminal Justice System.”
The authors of the report, which surveyed postsecondary education facilities for the incarcerated in 50 states, said they didn’t expect to find so many hindrances to postsecondary education for those who are or have been in prison.
“It is really shocking that only 10 states allow all (incarcerated or once-incarcerated) people to access postsecondary education,” said Leah Bacon, policy analyst at The Justice Center, who is also one of four co-authors of the Justice Center study.
Whether states do it willfully or by limiting access through old, outdated restrictions, the survey’s findings do indeed come as a shock in this, the 21st century.
“It was a surprise to us to see how many barriers there are in policy and practice (in providing postsecondary education to the incarcerated), especially because it has been shown that participation in education has reduced recidivism,” said Le’Ann Duran, one of the authors of the report, and deputy director, economic mobility, at the Justice Center.
