Thousands of prisoners throughout the US get their college degrees behind bars, most of them paid for by the federal Pell Grant program, which offers the neediest undergraduates tuition aid. That program is about to expand exponentially next month.
REPRESA, California — The graduates lined up, brushing off their gowns and adjusting classmates' tassels and stoles. As the graduation march played, the 85 men appeared to hoots and cheers from their families. They marched to the stage — one surrounded by barbed wire fence and constructed by fellow prisoners.
For prisoners who get their college degrees, including those at Folsom State Prison who got grants during an experimental period that started in 2016, it can be the difference between walking free with a life ahead and ending up back behind bars. Finding a job is difficult with a criminal conviction, and a college degree is an advantage former prisoners desperately need.
If a prisoner paroles with a degree, never reoffends, gets a job earning a good salary and pays taxes, then the expansion of prison education shouldn't be a hard sell, said David Zuckerman, the project's interim director. The ban on Pell Grants for prisoners caused the hundreds of college-in-prison programs that existed in the 1970s and 1980s to go almost entirely extinct by the late 90s.
Aside from students dressed in prisoner blues, classes inside Folsom Prison look and feel like any college class. Instructors give incarcerated students the same assignments as the pupils on campus. In primary school, he was a target for bullies. As a teen, he remembered seeking acceptance from the wrong people. When he completed high school, Massey joined the Air Force.
In between haircuts for correctional officers and other prison staff, Massey took advantage of his access to WiFi connection to study, take tests and work on assignments. Internet service doesn't reach the prisoners' housing units. Massey found his mom, wife and daughter for a long-awaited celebratory embrace. He reserved the longest and tightest embrace for his 9-year-old daughter, Grace. Her small frame collapsed into his outstretched arms, as wife Jacq'lene Massey looked on.
"There's a radio station I listen to, a Christian radio station, that I've been thinking one day I would like to work for," Massey said. "They are always talking about redemption stories. So I would like to share my redemption story, one day."
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