DEGREE of FREEDOM
Anthony Cardenales began stealing fruit as a youngster in the South Bronx, and by the time he was 17 he was in prison, serving a 17-year sentence for murder. During a family visit, when he admonished his daughter for getting into fights at school, she countered, “But that’s what you do, Daddy.”
The comment led “Tone,” as his friends call him, to commit himself to turning his life around. He applied to the Bard Prison Initiative, a full liberal-arts degree program now operating in six New York correctional facilities, which admitted him first to an associate’s degree program and then for a bachelor’s degree. Going to college, Cardenales says, led to his “internal transformation.” It gave him hope for the future.
Upon release, Cardenales landed a job at what is now the Hugo Neu Corporation, a diversified recycling and real-estate company.
Today, nearly 10 years later, he is one of the most trusted members of the senior management. As the di- rector of human resources at Hugo Neu told me, Cardenales is especially good at “cultivating successful teams,” which accounts for the “high level of respect we all have for him.”
Like Cardenales, men and women who have been to college in prison are not likely to return to prison. The rate of prison return for criminals varies across all 50 states, with the national average running upward of 50 percent.
Meanwhile, prisoners who have been to college while inside report return rates of between 2 and 5 percent.
Not only is that good news for society, it’s also cost effective. It costs $5,000 a year to pay for college in prison, while holding an individual in prison in New York state costs roughly $60,000 annually. By lowering rates of return, educating prisoners can lower prison costs.
Despite the clear public benefit, college-in-prison programs are not widely available. When Pell Grant eligibility was terminated for people in prison in 1994, most programs closed their doors. Those that have continued to operate are supported by private funds. Fundraising covers the purchase of books and materials and, in some cases, the small stipends paid to professors, who generally are faculty members from the sponsoring colleges and teach at a prison once or twice a week. In some states, there are online college programs, but those are not available in New York state, which does not allow incarcerated individuals access to the Internet.
Toward the end of the Obama administration, the Department of Education launched an experimental “second chance” Pell program to help colleges defray expenses associated with operating a prison program.
If that initiative were extended and expanded, it would help develop college in prison nationwide, but the initiative’s fate is not yet known.
In 2012, Cuomo proposed a small experimental plan to fund college study at a few state correctional facilities. His proposal ran into opposition from conservative upstate Republicans, who did not want to offer college access to “cons.”
Thereafter, Cuomo developed an alternative plan to pay for college with private funds as well as funds held by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office that had been recovered from criminal activity.
That’s great, but public funding in the form of Pell Grant assistance is needed to place college-in-prison on a stable footing.
College-in- prison students often talk of wanting to “give back” once they go home. They are eager to help young people avoid the mistakes they made. They want to stand against the gangs and violence they knew as youngsters.
This aspiration leads many formerly incarcerated men and women into work with social- and healthservice agencies or with community organizations.
Investing in college in prison is investing in public safety. It’s prudent public policy in the interest of all.
There is one proven way to help solve the incarceration crisis in America: Send inmates to college