OTAN News
Second Chances: Education and Justice Involved Students
“Research demonstrates that people who obtain their high school equivalencies while in prison increase their earnings by 24-29% within the first year of release, and those who participate in correctional education programs are 13% less likely to recidivate than those who do not.”
This blog post underscores the importance of “rehabilitation, redemption, and reentry.” ED “recently announced a Second Chance Fellow program. Modeled after the Department of Justice’s program, ED’s Second Chance Fellow program will leverage lived experience and subject matter expertise to improve our policies and programs, enhancing our ability to implement and increase the impact of Pell reinstatement as well as other cross-cutting issues which impact students who are incarcerated and formerly incarcerated.”
A priority area is correctional education as they “respect, engage, listen to, and support people who are justice-involved, including people who are incarcerated, as they seek to improve their lives through an array of education: adult basic education, high school diplomas and equivalencies, career and technical and postsecondary education.” Education “provides the best chance to create a new vision and identity for themselves; education provides them with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to thrive and build better lives; education inspires their children and families to also pursue education; and education dramatically reduces their likelihood for recidivism.”
Programs such as Project Rebound, the Institute for Justice and Opportunity, the Rising Scholars Program, the 180 RAP program, and NJ-STEP are just a few examples of efforts that institutions have undertaken to support justice-involved students that can serve as models.
The updated version of ED’s Beyond the Box which incorporates lessons and experienced voices from the field and national rehabilitation experts delivers recommendations and advice for higher education institutions. For our purposes, OTAN gleaned recommendations best suited for adult education summarized in this news article, Beyond the Box: Applied to Adult Education.
OTAN partners with California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations (CDCR) educators to share pertinent information about formerly incarcerated students who enroll in our adult schools.
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