House bill seeks to expand higher education access in prisons 

Harshini Kanala, Contributing Writer

Gov. Glen Youngkin is soon to sign House Bill 2158, a major stride in prison reform. This bipartisan bill, patroned by delegates Betsy Carr and Carrie Coyner, aims to expand higher education opportunities for incarcerated individuals in Virginia by allowing Virginia’s public and private higher education institutions to partner with the Department of Corrections to provide postsecondary education programs in state prisons.

David Coogan, an associate professor of English at VCU, founded and co-directed Open Minds, a program that started in 2010 at the Richmond City Jail that brings VCU classes to inmates.

The bill focuses on general education and accredited entry-level courses, which contradicts his program which focuses on 300-level classes that are not accredited, therefore making the program cost-free for inmates, according to Coogan.

“We did try to get funding at one point to get the residents at the jail to get them credit for the classes,” Coogan said. “But it turned out that as much as everybody liked the idea, nobody wanted to quite get on that hamster wheel of just continuing to search for money.”

Coogan said these strides to better education for inmates was important because there is ample research suggesting that education prevents people from reoffending.

“We’ve known this for many many decades, there’s lots of studies on it,” Coogan said. “But without the funding, it’s really hard. Because the college program would come to the facility.”

Terri Erwin, the director of Virginia Consensus for Higher Education in Prison project at the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, said the bill focuses on basic literacy and general education for people in prison who are yet to earn a high school diploma or the equivalent.

Erwin said 62% of incarcerated Virginians have a high school education but lack a college education, and the bill seeks to partner community colleges to get prisoners their associate’s degrees.

“A person who gets out of a state prison with a bachelor’s degree will have many of the same opportunities as a student who graduates from VCU in May.”

Erwin said having an education would help remove the stigma attached to people who come out of incarceration and apply for jobs with their resumes.

“They’ll have that one line on there that makes them look very similar to everyone else, and that will be part of what helps to move forward and reintegrate back into the society with a good job, having had the opportunity to get a good education.” Erwin said.

Although this bill passed both the House of Delegates and the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support, the governor amended the bill to have a one year delay in implementation and sent it back to the House, according to Erwin.

“It’s problematic because already this was a study bill. So that means that we were going to take a year with this multi-agency task force to study and plan how to implement these college programs,” Erwin said. “So if you don’t start your one year study till one year later, you’re now looking at two years before implementation would take place”

Erwin said the grants, scholarships and opportunities were more readily available before former President Bill Clinton’s “tough on crime” laws, which intended to discourage criminal activity by making the consequences more punitive, such as removing Pell Grants from prison education programs.

There were over a thousand college programs in prisons across the country prior to 1994, according to Erwin.

“When you’re incarcerated, there’s not much opportunity to work, and the prison jobs that are available generally pay less than a dollar an hour. So imagine trying to make your college tuition money if that’s how much money you can earn,” Erwin said.

Erwin said the foundation for the bill is about giving people the opportunity to change because it’s human nature to make certain decisions– some good, some bad–  based on their situations at a given time.

“Ninety-five percent of incarcerated people eventually return home,” Erwin said. “The question to ask yourself in the mirror is, do you want people to come home with more of an education and an opportunity to live a good life and contribute in a positive way, or do you want to handicap them by making sure that they don’t get much of an education and then have to struggle their way through their lives?”