“So when I came into prison and I saw an opportunity to go to college, I took it.”Ĭonsider this: It costs roughly $106,000 per year to incarcerate one adult in California. “The last day I talked to him, he was telling me, I should go back to college,” Massey said. The new rules, which overturn a 1994 ban on Pell Grants for prisoners, begin to address decades of policy during the “tough on crime” 1970s-2000 that brought about mass incarceration and stark racial disparities in the nation’s 1.9 million prison population. That program is about to expand exponentially next month, giving about 30,000 more students behind bars some $130 million in financial aid per year. 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 that they don’t have to repay. Their black commencement garb almost hid their aqua and navy-blue prison uniforms as they received college degrees, high school diplomas and vocational certificates earned while they served time. They marched to the stage – one surrounded by barbed wire fence and constructed by fellow prisoners.įor these were no ordinary graduates. As the graduation march played, the 85 men appeared to hoots and cheers from their families. REPRESA, California - The graduates lined up, brushing off their gowns and adjusting classmates’ tassels and stoles.
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