Join us for a lecture presented by Sarah Tahamont, Assistant Professor, Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Maryland.
In the last several years, providing access to post-secondary education in prisons has received widespread bipartisan support at both state and federal levels. In 2015, after a funding drought of more than two decades, the Second Chance Pell pilot program, which allows colleges and universities to use federal Pell dollars to fund higher education in prison programs, reinvigorated the landscape of higher education in prison. In 2021, Congress reinstated access to Pell funded higher education for incarcerated individuals and overhauled the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) in an attempt to increase access to federal student aid. Eligibility for Pell funded higher education in prison went nationwide just this past summer. The fanfare regarding these policy changes suggests that they are poised to create a sea change in prison higher education nationwide. However, recent research has shown that eligibility requirements may severely limit the reach of Pell-funded higher education opportunities. Furthermore, the equity consequences of eligibility requirements for Pell funded higher education are unknown. In this talk, I will discuss the implications of recent policy changes on the scalability of Pell funded higher education and then explore the equity consequences of some of the recent policy changes aimed at increasing access to higher education for incarcerated individuals. I will conclude by discussing the implications of these implementation challenges for our understanding of the relationship between Pell funded higher educational programming and individual outcomes both during incarceration and after release.
Zoom link available upon request from jboire@umd.edu.