PAT CROSSLEY/Sun-Gazette
Panelists speak at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education in Prisons.
It costs on average about $60,000 per year to house an inmate in the state’s prison system. If the stay is purely punitive and not restorative, the chances of that inmate returning are great and the costs are incurred again and again. The rate of recidivism in the state is 64 percent which means of those released from prison, 64 percent will be back within three years.
For the panelists featured at the annual meeting of PA CHEP (Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education in Prisons), education is the key to breaking that cycle. The meeting was held at the Pennsylvania College of Technology recently.
“Education is probably the most decisive factor when it comes to recidivism,” said panelist Michael Grant.
“I’ve met a few people who became highly educated in prison and when they went home, (they) never looked back except to help…I saw a lot of people who focused on trivial things while they were inside-came right back. Education is the key,” he added.
For many of the panelists, although they were intelligent, they didn’t really have an education prior to their incarceration.
That was the case for Jonathan Hackenburg. His time in prison was a result of his addiction. His sentence was five to 30 years.
“Thinking about spending the majority of my life behind bars was frightening,” he said.
He was given the opportunity to become a certified peer specialist in order to help others dealing with addiction. But first he needed to get his GED. The problem was that he didn’t think he was smart enough to pass the test, but he did pass.
He contended that there needed to be more opportunities in the prison system for people to get an education.
“One of my biggest things I preach, and I talk about this the whole time, is educate yourself. If you want an opportunity, if you want to be successful, when you get home-because most people do go home-if you want that, you’re going to need it,” Hackenburg said.
Member after member of the panel hammered home the idea-education is key in determining success post-incarceration.
The average grade level of someone entering the prison system is only tenth grade, although panel moderator Kurt Danysh pointed out that a high school diploma is no guarantee that a person can read or write. In 2016, 62 percent of people in state prisons had not completed high. Those entering who have a college degree is 4 percent.
Danysh shared some statistics about the benefits of education on reducing recidivism
Ex-offenders who complete some high school courses have around a 55 percent recidivism rate. For those who get some vocational training while in prison, the rate goes down to 30 percent. For an associate’s degree, it’s 13.7 percent and for a bachelor’s degree, it’s 5.6 percent. The rate for a master’s degree is zero.
“Education is the only thing we know that scientifically proves it will reduce recidivism and yet we still have to have conferences like this to convince people to bring education in prisons,” Danysh said.
Ashlee Massey’s story is illustrative of how a systemic lack of opportunities within prison walls adversely affects outcome.
When someone is incarcerated they are given the chance to work on their recovery or work on programming that focuses on the severity of their targets, Massey, whose original sentence was two to six years, said.
“I was not given access to education in prison because of my target. I had to work on my programming,” she said.
“When you first get in there you’re like, what can I do to get out…right now, I need to get out right now because as a woman in prison I need to get home to my kid. Even though my bad choices had led me there, I said I had to fix everything right now so I can get back to my child,” she said.
“When I’m looking at the choices that were given to me I asked myself like well why can’t I go back to school as well,” she said.
Because of the programs she was required to do while she was incarcerated, such as Criminal Thinking, Moving On, and Violence Prevention, in addition to Recovery, she said they determined that education was not going to be part of it.
“So I said, I’m going to just do what I have to do so I can get out,” she said.
She explained that in prison you can only do the programming that fits into the line movement schedule.
Line movement in prisons is when inmates can move from one place to another within the facility in a single file line.
“There’s only a certain time where people can move around campus for security purposes. If my program wasn’t able to fit in that line. Then I couldn’t go,” Massey said.
Because of that system, she was told that she wouldn’t be able to get an education. Then she was given a job in the kitchen, which she described as “very hard” with a “lot of drama.”
She ended up with a “stack of write-ups,” and even spent time in the hole where she had time to wonder why she hadn’t been offered education to help her get through her recovery?
She ended up getting out, only to return for the second time. She still was not allowed education because she had to work on other programming.
In addition to the line movement issue as a hindrance, there was also the issue of budgets. Inmates are only allotted so many program hours at a time and when those programs used up the budgeted amount, that was it.
When Ashlee finally got out, she realized that she needed to change her life.
“I remember walking down the street and I came up to Penn College and I was just like, listen, I need help. I don’t know what I need to do. I’m in recovery. I just need to change my life,” she said.
“I found out about the Human Services and Restorative Justice program and I attended every single day-every day I was on it. The staff here is so amazing, like you wouldn’t believe,” she said.
“We talked about building a community-this is my community right here,” she continued.
Massey, who is originally from Virginia Beach, said she realizes she’s ended up here because of her bad choices.
“It shouldn’t just be about the program that you can do to get out. It should be about the
programs, the recovery programs, in education, because without education, maybe I would not be here. Knowledge is power. We have to understand that people in there don’t know what that means. They don’t know how to take advantage of that,” she said.
Featured speaker for the event was Romarilyn Ralston, senior director of the Justice Education Center at Claremont Colleges. Ralston identified herself as black feminist abolitionist, who survived 23 years of incarceration.
“I must say that I am a little concerned about the future of prison education programs and higher education programs in prison, considering the results of the general election. I’m sure many of you are as well. I’m also very concerned about Project 2025 as I’m sure many of you are concerned because it speaks to the dismantling of the education system and the Department of Education,” Ralston said.
“I want to make sure that we are aware that these things exist, although we celebrate so many advancements in post secondary education, especially in incarceration, there’s a real threat that exists and we should,number one be aware of that and number two, remain hopeful. I am hopeful because I believe in the human spirit,” she continued.
“I believe that we can overcome these challenges and I believe that there are some of the most brilliant people inside cages across this country that deserve to have access to quality education and to achieve that college degree that so many of them dreamt about as kids,” Ralston said..
Penn College offers a Prison-to-College program designed to empower individuals impacted by the justice system through educational programming. It is for those in pre-release and post-release at the Lycoming County Prison and the State Correctional Institution at Muncy, according to information from the college’s website.