{"id":159462,"date":"2016-05-10T10:28:36","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T14:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=159462"},"modified":"2016-05-10T19:52:50","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T23:52:50","slug":"rochesters-prison-education-program-aims-to-transform-lives-of-inmates-undergraduates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/rochesters-prison-education-program-aims-to-transform-lives-of-inmates-undergraduates\/","title":{"rendered":"Rochester’s prison education program aims to transform lives of inmates, undergraduates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Aubrie James, a graduate student at Cornell University, tutors incarcerated students enrolled in Introduction to Genetics. (Cornell Prison Education Program photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Education is often lauded as a means of empowering people. Colleges and universities are, in many ways, the loci of the \u201cknowledge is power\u201d ethos. But increasingly there is a movement to bring higher education to an underserved\u2014and often invisible\u2014population: incarcerated people.<\/p>\n

The United States has the highest prison population in the world, with the number of prisoners soaring in the decades since the mid-1970s. With just five percent of the world\u2019s population, the U.S. incarcerates roughly a quarter of the world\u2019s prisoners.<\/p>\n

\u201cA generation ago there were loads of degree-granting college programs in U.S. prisons,\u201d shares Joshua Dubler, assistant professor of religion. But in 1994, incarcerated people were made ineligible for the federal grants that funded these programs. This was a troubling development, especially in light of research showing education to effectively reduce recidivism and assist the formerly incarcerated with their social integration.<\/p>\n

Since the early 2000s, American universities have worked to address this issue. Cornell University, for example, has offered its Cornell Prison Education Program<\/a><\/strong> (CPEP) for nearly two decades. In fall 2015, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded CPEP a grant to expand its program and assemble a consortium of college-in-prison programs in upstate New York.<\/p>\n

Dubler has spearheaded the effort to involve Rochester in this partnership opportunity. \u201cAs institutions of higher education, we are in a unique position to contribute substantively to the effort to end mass incarceration in this country,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

Beginning in the 2016\u201317 academic year, with funding from the Mellon Foundation and from Arts, Sciences and Engineering, Rochester will join forces with the Cornell Prison Education Program. In collaboration with the newly formed college-in-prison consortium, the University plans to offer four courses annually in area correctional facilities. In the fall, philosophy PhD candidate Jarod Sickler is slated to teach \u201cIntro to World Religions\u201d at Five Points Correctional Facility in Romulus, New York.<\/p>\n

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Graduation Day 2014 at the Auburn Correctional Facility. Fifteen students received AA degrees from Cayuga Community College in a program administrated by Cornell University. (Cornell Prison Education Program photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The benefits of prison education work both ways as incarcerated people learn from the participating students and faculty, and vice versa. The result is education coupled with community building, an opportunity to bridge boundaries that might never be traversed otherwise.<\/p>\n

Dubler has seen these results firsthand. In addition to his research at the intersection of religion and mass incarceration, for years he taught at Pennsylvania\u2019s Graterford Prison through Villanova University\u2019s program. Last fall, with the support of the Rochester Center for Community Leadership, he taught a course titled \u201cTheories of Religion\u201d at the famed Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York, an hour\u2019s drive from the city of Rochester.<\/p>\n