College Behind Bars COLLEGE BEHIND BARS, a four-part documentary film series, tells the story of a small group of incarcerated men and women struggling to earn college degrees and turn their lives around in one of the most rigorous and effective prison education programs in… Read More
25th Anniversary of the 1994 Crime Bill
September 13th marks the 25th anniversary of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, often referred to the 1994 Crime Bill. It was one of the most far-reaching crime bills ever passed by Congress, with widespread implications. But for the field… Read More
Education Against the Odds
BPI alumnus Alex Hall ('17) authored an essay describing the societal and personal value of a rigorous liberal arts education in the series Education Against All Odds. The full essay, reproduced below, can also be found on David Bryne's Reasons to be Cheerful website here.… Read More
Reversing the Tide
Ellen Condliffe Lagemann is the author of Liberating Minds: The Case for College in Prison (The New Press, 2016), from which this article contains excerpts. She was formerly the Levy Institute Research Professor at Bard College and a Distinguished Fellow at the Bard Prison… Read More
Actively Engaged
Darren Mack is a justice advocate and prominent member of the #CLOSErikers campaign. He enrolled with BPI in 2006 after learning about a distant relative that had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death at the age of 14 by an all-white jury. This experience… Read More
What a Soccer Star Teaches Us About Criminal Justice
BPI alumnus Alelur Duran ('18) authored an essay urging criminal justice movements to push beyond reforms aimed only at non-violent drug offenses arguing "It will be a shame if our country’s criminal justice system continued to treat people with nothing but prison sentences by… Read More
A ‘Second Chance’ After 27 Years in Prison: How Criminal Justice Helped an Ex-Inmate Graduate
Goucher College partnered with BPI to create the Goucher Prison Education Partnership (GPEP) in 2011. Now a national leader in the field, GPEP currently enrolls about 100 incarcerated Goucher students across two prison facilities in Maryland. This article, reproduced below, first appeared in the… Read More
Washington University graduates its first class of students in prison
Faculty at Washington University in St. Louis worked together with BPI to design and launch the Washington University Prison Education Project (PEP), which joined the Consortium in 2014. In 2019, PEP students celebrated the program's first graduation with the ten students earning Associates degrees… Read More
How maximum security inmates took on Cambridge in a debate about nuclear weapons — and won
The three students from the University of Cambridge, wearing black suits and clutching sheaves of papers, stepped onto the wooden auditorium stage under the warm yellow lights. As members of a storied debate team, they had competed the world over but never in a… Read More
Marian University to offer classes at Indiana Women’s Prison
Sixteen women at the Indiana Women’s Prison (IWP) on the west side of Indianapolis are now pursuing college degrees through Marian University. The opportunity is provided through the Women’s College Partnership, a joint venture between Marian and the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI). Marian University has… Read More