Negotiations Kick Off on Prison Education Programs, Pell Grants

Dr. Stanley Andrisse, assistant professor at Howard University's School of Medicine and a formerly incarcerated person directing Prison to ProWhile locked up on a ten-year prison sentence in his early twenties, Dr. Stanley Andrisse was told that he was “scum,” and that his life was hopeless from here on out. But soon, higher education changed all of that. When Andrisse left prison, he pursued a doctorate with the support of a few professors who saw potential. Today, he is an assistant professor at Howard University’s School of Medicine, where he researches diabetes as an endocrinologist.

“I know very personally and intimately the power of education,” said Andrisse. “It became this transformative tool that helped take me out of this rock-bottom hole that I was psychologically, emotionally, and physically in. Because it brings back a sense of self-worth after being told that you were worth nothing. You can see instead that you can bring something to the community and the world.”

Andrisse started a nonprofit called Prison to Pro to help current and formerly incarcerated people pursue higher education. And this week, he is one of a handful of formerly incarcerated voices who will speak to the U.S. Department of Education (ED) in negotiations on prison education programs, namely what expanding Pell Grant funding to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people will look like.

“Centering the voices of currently and formerly incarcerated people is important in this process,” said Andrisse. 

Since the 1994 Crime Bill, formerly and currently incarcerated people had been banned from Pell Grant funding. Yet even at that time, experts say, it was known that college education in prisons reaped powerful benefits, helping make prisons less violent places and improving the odds of success for people once they left prison. 

“In the 90s, prison wardens pleaded with Congress not to take away Pell Grants,” said Dr. Jessica Neptune, the national director of the Bard Prison Initiative, one of the country’s most respected and longest-running college education programs. “But the move in 1994 was symbolic. It was a message that we as a society held very little value in the lives and futures of people in prison. So, it is really significant that this punitive urge has dissipated. But it’s not a guarantee that what comes next is what we’re going to get right.”

Congress last December lifted the Pell Grant ban with bipartisan support. Now it is up to ED to decide on how that expansion will look.