Prison education cuts recidivism, but who should pay for it?

In absence of state funding, private donors are stepping in to support a movement by Cornell University to educate prison inmates and cut recidivism.

Since 1999, the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) has offered credit for courses taught by volunteer faculty members and graduate students. The program offers 12 courses each semester with no tuition and fees. Undergraduate families and a few small grants have supported the effort.

In 2014, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo presented a plan to open state money for inmate education. Unable to walk the plan through the state legislature, Cuomo backed off. This year, CPEP received a three-year, $1 million grant that will allow it to double its course offerings and enrollment.

“We’re trying to show we are a serious program in the corrections system. We’re going to reach a large number of people,” CPEP director Rob Scott said.

Pell Grants were pulled from inmates in state and federal prisons in 1994. It was then that Cornell Professor Winthrop Wetherbee started offering classes to prison inmates at nearby Auburn Correctional Facility free of charge. Cornell later gave college credit for the courses, and now the program is expanding to more medium- and maximum-security facilities in New York. Studying three hours a day, twice a week, the prisoners earn two-year degrees through Cayuga Community College in partnership with Cornell’s program.

“As recently as the early 1990s, the great majority of state corrections systems offered college-level programs,” Wetherbee wrote in defense of CPEP. “Every state could cite studies and statistics demonstrating that providing education had a direct and significant effect on recidivism.”

Recent studies show inmates who receive education are 43 percent less likely to reoffend. (Sixty-seven percent of prison inmates are rearrested within three years of release.) The Department of Justice estimates that every $1 spent educating an inmate saves correctional facilities $5.

“As Christians, we take seriously the biblical mandate to ‘remember those in prison,’” said Tim Robison, senior vice president at Prison Fellowship Ministries. “Education has become an important topic of discussion in criminal justice circles.” Robison explained that some prison programs have inmate students achieving a full grade-point higher than is necessary to stay in the program.

But disagreement exists over whether prison education should receive state funding. Cuomo faced stiff opposition as he worked to present his prisoner education plan last year. “It is simply not fair to ask hardworking taxpayers to pay for college for convicted criminals when they struggle to put their own children through college,” said Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y. He and other New York congressman publicly opposed Cuomo’s efforts. “Our children should be placed above convicted criminals,” Reed said.