Thousands of prisoners throughout the United States get their college degrees behind bars, most of them paid for by the federal Pell Grant program, which offers the neediest undergraduates tuition aid they don’t have to repay.
Incarcerated graduates, who finished various educational and vocational programs in prison, wait for the start of their graduation ceremony at Folsom State Prison in Folsom, Calif., May 25, 2023.
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.
That doesn’t mean it’s always popular. Using taxpayer money to give college aid to people who’ve broken the law can be controversial. When the Obama administration offered a limited number of Pell Grants to prisoners through executive action in 2015, some prominent Republicans opposed it, arguing in favor of improving the existing federal job training and re-entry programs instead.
President Joe Biden has strongly supported giving Pell Grants to prisoners in recent years. It’s a turnaround – the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, championed by the former Delaware senator, was what barred prisoners from getting Pell Grants in the first place. Biden has since said he didn’t agree with that part of the compromise legislation.
Massey enrolled in college after one year in the military, but dropped out. Later, he became a certified nursing assistant and held the job for 10 years. He married and had two children.“I was living like a little kid and I had my own little kids,” Massey said. “And I thought if I do the bare minimum, that’s OK.”
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. Racial imbalances in prison college enrollment and completion rates are also a growing concern for advocates. People of color make up a disproportionate segment of the U.S. prison population. Yet white students were enrolled in college programs at a percentage higher than their portion of the overall prison population, according to Black and Hispanic students were enrolled by eight and 15 percentage points below their prison population, respectively.
Michael Love, who had paroled from Folsom Prison five months earlier, came back to give the valedictory speech. He wore a suit and tie underneath his cap and gown.After serving more than 35 years in prison, the 55-year-old is currently enrolled in a Master’s program at Sacramento State. He’s been hired as a teaching aide and will teach freshmen communications students in the fall, and is also working as a mentor with Project Rebound, an organization that assists formerly incarcerated people.
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