In addition to helping incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people achieve their educational goals, the Petey Greene Program provides a powerful learning experience for volunteer tutors, who tell us that they join the PGP because they want to make a difference. They want to do something about a system that funnels people, especially Black people, from failed schooling to prison. Therefore, the PGP complements training in the practice of tutoring with justice-oriented leadership development to help volunteers understand the contexts that produce the educational experiences of the students they support. Through this engagement, the PGP connects volunteers to people and organizations doing the work of supporting incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and to the ideas, organizations, campaigns, and people focused on changing unjust systems and policies. 

Although incarcerated people are disproportionately Black, historically, most PGP tutors have been students at predominantly White institutions. Recognizing that those most impacted by the criminal legal system should be leading efforts to change it, the PGP developed the HBCU Forward Initiative, a multi-year program that will redesign our volunteer experience in order to elevate and better support Black tutors, while increasing their representation in our volunteer pool.

A collaboration with Howard University

PGP launched the HBCU Forward Initiative in January 2021 with a model program at Howard University, developed and implemented in partnership with Dr. Bahiyyah Muhammad. The program prepares Black volunteers to tutor in carceral settings, supports them in processing their tutoring experience and the trauma they may experience tutoring inside a prison, helps them understand their experiences through a system-impacted framework, and guides them in developing on-campus justice-oriented programming. 

Replicating and expanding the program

The PGP will replicate the model developed with and for Black volunteers at Howard University at additional HBCU campuses and will also implement the model program at predominantly White institutions, in order to elevate Black volunteers across the PGP’s 30 existing university partnerships. Implementing the model program at Howard has already resulted in a 5% increase of PGP tutors in the Washington, D.C., area who identify as Black. The PGP aims to engage at least 200 Black volunteers annually by 2023, generating a network of future HBCU graduates who will join efforts to reimagine the criminal legal system.