Restore college-funding eligibility for prisoners, ABA leaders urge Congress
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The ABA’s House of Delegates easily passed a resolution Tuesday urging Congress to restore Federal Pell Grant eligibility for prisoners with qualifying needs.
Resolution 108B, sponsored by the Criminal Justice Section, would expand on a current Department of Education pilot program unveiled last week. The Second Chance Pell Pilot is intended to see whether improved access to Pell Grants—which provide need-based aid for undergraduate students—reduces recidivism and increases employment rates for former prisoners.
“While fewer than half of all prisons offer postsecondary education, research suggests that postsecondary education and training for incarcerated individuals is correlated with several positive post-release outcomes, including increased educational attainment levels, reduced recidivism rates, and improved post-release employment opportunities and earnings,” the Department of Education’s experimental proposal (PDF) states.
Prisoners were eligible for Pell Grants from the start of the program in 1972. But the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, backed by the Democratic Party and signed by President Bill Clinton, stripped prisoners of that eligibility. The Criminal Justice Section’s Stephen Saltzburg, a professor at George Washington University Law School, says that as a result, prisoners are now less able upon their release to “take their place in society.”
One speaker spoke in favor of the resolution. Bob Weekes, an investigator for the Imperial County Public Defender’s Office in California, described a former client rearrested after four days of freedom.
“He said ‘You know, Mr. Weekes, I was so institutionalized that when I got out, I couldn’t even operate a cigarette machine to get some smokes,’” Weekes said. “We can do better than that.”
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See also:
NPR: “The Plan To Give Pell Grants To Prisoners”
CNN Money: “Obama to offer Pell grants to prisoners”
Inside Higher Ed: “Politics of Pell for Prisoners”
Updated at 4:28 p.m. to add more background information on Pell Grants.
