With the pending reinstatement of Pell Grants for the more than 400,000 eligible incarcerated learners, combined with decarceration efforts at the federal, state, and municipal levels, most of those who begin their educational journeys while incarcerated will complete them outside. To do so, they will need support to successfully overcome the challenges that make continuing education post-incarceration difficult. For this reason, the PGP recently joined over 100 people and organizations in the field of prison education in signing a memo, authored by College & Community Fellowship) and the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network, that urges the Department of Education to support education in reentry by providing a regulatory framework for programs serving both incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners.
Panelists conferred on policy initiatives like Banning the Box, standardization of educational programming, housing support, counseling, and financial aid, and helped us understand how we can advocate for policy change that supports an education continuum for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners.
The Petey Greene Program seeks to develop justice-oriented citizens—those who understand the root causes of injustice—by providing college students and community members with the opportunity to tutor, and educating volunteers on the need and opportunity to effect systemic change in the criminal legal system. To that end, we offer the Justice Education Series, which is designed to raise volunteers’ and public awareness of the policies and and practices that create mass incarceration and produce the educational experiences of the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners that we support.