Prison education opportunities make communities safer

Endless rows of cages, not much larger than closets, extended as far as I could see. The stale smell of cigarette smoke and cheap plastic wafted over me, and I felt as though the air was being sucked out of my lungs. This was a place meant to serve one purpose: punishment.

The final stop on our tour of Sing Sing Prison, however, was quite different. Walking inside,

I felt I could breathe again. This was Sing Sing’s academic unit, a relative anomaly in today’s modern prison. Operated by the nonprofit Hudson Link, it is the only program in the New York state prison system to offer associate, bachelor’s and master’s degree programs.

Speaking to the inmates, we heard how deeply meaningful the opportunity was to them. Many described the choice they faced entering prison: to carry on with the behavior that landed them there, or to pursue a path that might give them a way out of that lifestyle.

They are lucky even to have that choice.

Programs like Hudson Link have become more prevalent since the mid-1990s, when incarcerated people lost eligibility for state Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) grants. Although New York was once a leader in prison education, the

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number of inmates pursuing degrees in the state plummeted, and despite the work of Hudson Link and other such programs, it has never rebounded.

A bill to reinstate TAP grant eligibility has been proposed several times, but thus far has never made it out of committee. But with a Democratic governor and supermajorities in both houses, the chances for passage have never been better.

The benefits to educating incarcerated people are well documented and extend far past the walls of our state institutions. Studies have shown that for every dollar invested into prisoner education programs, the taxpayer would save $4 to $5 in reduced incarceration costs. Individuals who had some form of education in prison are 43 percent less likely to reoffend and will see on average a 13 percent boost in the likelihood of employment. And the rewards extend past finances. More educational resources in state prisons generally mean better conditions for prisoners and corrections officers.

Some of these arguments have been stated before, including in this newspaper, but there has still been no progress. Perhaps we are not getting solutions because we are not asking the right questions.

A common refrain is: Why should we allocate resources to those who have caused harm to their communities? This is the wrong question. We should be asking: What are the best, most costeffective ways to increase safety and well-being?

When it comes to incarceration, the United States is higher than any other country both in sheer numbers and in the rate of incarceration, according to World Prison Brief. We have stripped most prisons down to the barest of services, without regard to the effects on prisoners, guards or the families and communities they belong to. Whether they realize it or not, the “tough on crime” advocates are really advocating for an endless stream of uneducated, unemployable and often traumatized people returning to their communities every year. Have any of us benefited from this system? Has any of this made us safer?

We have tried the “tough on crime” approach ad nauseam, and it hasn’t increased safety. To quote Danielle Sered, executive director of the restorative justice organization Common Justice, “If incarceration worked to produce safety, the United States would be the safest country in all of human history.”

We need to ask the question: What is the outcome we want here? If the answer is health, safety, and economic benefit, then the right choice is to provide educational opportunities to New York state prisoners.