Washington, D.C. -- When Congress banned Pell Grants for prisoners this year, it appeared to have thrown away the key to the college classroom for thousands of inmates.
Educators in many state prisons echoed the comments of Sheila Gilreath, education administrator for the Kentucky Department of Corrections, who bemoaned the loss of what she said is a key “self-esteem builder” that helps inmates work toward crime-free futures.
“For all intents and purposes, our college program is gone,” Ms. Gilreath said.
In other states, college programs for prisoners may not be eliminated, but they will lose so much money that they will shrink significantly unless they find new revenue sources.
The Congressional action this past summer triggered a Catch-22 for these programs: The elimination of Pell Grants, the primary source of tuition money for prisoners, meant that inmates would have to pay their own way. Nearly all of the 22,000 to 27,000 inmates in the programs cannot do that.
“It’s probably going to be the death knell in many states,” said Stephen Steurer, executive director of the Correctional Education Association. “Nobody knows the exact impact, but those states that depend on Pell Grants will lose their programs.”
Education Department guidance is due shortly in the form of a letter to campus aid administrators. Prison educators said they had been operating on the assumption that grants would be available through this academic year.
The upshot, said Mr. Steurer and several state coordinators, will be to limit prison-education programs in many states to adult-literacy, General Equivalency Degree, and vocational programs.
In California, eight colleges have contracts with the state Department of Corrections to provide instruction in prisons. Those contracts provide the only state funds for supporting the program.
The elimination of Pell funds will take away the means for the inmates to take advantage of the classes, said Joe Taylor, supervisor of education programs for the California department. The state education efforts focus almost entirely on basic literacy for the majority of the 120,000 inmates in the state system.
“The only inmates who are capable of going to college cannot pay for it out of their pockets,” Mr. Taylor said. “It has severely limited our ability to provide college courses.”
The move to ban Pell Grants was introduced into the crime bill this year by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican. However, its adherents and opponents did not divide along party lines.
In Ohio, the Democratic Senate candidate, Joel Hyatt, attacked his Republican opponent, Lieut. Gov. Mike DeWine, for opposing the ban, saying that it was unfair to provide student aid to prisoners when most families struggle to pay for college. Mr. DeWine accused Mr. Hyatt of “demagoguing the issue,” and said that he supported Pell Grants for prisoners because they give people skills to use when they are released.
The spat arose at the same time an Ohio legislative study group recommended that the state penal system should expand its educational offerings to prisoners. The report cited support from Pell Grants as the reason for the existence of university programs now available in state prisons.
In some states, the impact will be less severe because of support from state tuition grants or other public financing. In Minnesota, for example, the loss of Pell Grants will cut support for inmates in the state by about half. Roger Knudson, education coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Corrections, said his department would seek more money from the state legislature for its program next year.
“The guys who go through this succeed. They stay out,” Mr. Knudson said. “We figure that one or two guys who get out and get jobs pay enough taxes to cover the program for the whole year.”
In the meantime, Mr. Steurer of the Correctional Education Association is working to restore some form of federal support.
One problem faced by the supporters of prison-education programs has been a lack of nationwide data to measure their effectiveness. The association is embarking on such a study, financed by a grant from the Justice Department. It will examine what types of inmates enroll and what draws them to the classroom while they are behind bars.
On the legislative front, Mr. Steurer said he had some hope for a provision that Congress authorized this year to finance postsecondary education programs for offenders under the age of 25. The provision, which passed as part of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, received no funds for fiscal 1995.