Profile | College Behind Bars

College Behind Bars Making an Impact on the Field of College in Prison

When College Behind Bars premiered four years ago on PBS and later moved to Netflix, it served as an introduction for many people to learn about college-in-prison. Since the film’s airing, there have been many policy wins for the field of college education in… Read More 

News | Alumni Advocacy

Alumni Opinion: Felony Disenfranchisement Suppresses the Votes of Black and Latinx Americans

BPI government affairs officer, Dyjuan Tatro '18, argues that felony disenfranchisement should be understood as a racist mechanism of voter suppression. This blog post was originally posted by the Vera Institute of Justice and is reproduced below. I was released from New York State prison,… Read More 

Update | Alumni Advocacy

A Call to Action: Merit Board Eligibility

To the BPI community, Since early this year, BPI has been working with New York lawmakers to change Merit Board eligibility criteria so that incarcerated students with convictions classified as non-violent can be eligible for early release based on earning college credits. I am… Read More 

Justice in America Episode 29: Schools in Prison

Josie Duffy Rice and co-host Derecka Purnell are joined by Dyjuan Tatro and Wesley Caines to talk about education in prisons.

On this episode of Justice in America, Josie Duffy Rice and her co-host Derecka Purnell talk about education in prisons. They’ll discuss the impact of having access to education, the dire lack of available programming, and what happened to prison education after the 1994 crime bill. They’re joined by Dyjuan Tatro and Wesley Caines, alumni of the Bard Prison Initiative. The Bard Prison Initiative is a college program offered through Bard College in six New York State prisons. It’s also the subject of a critically acclaimed new documentary series on PBS, called College Behind Bars.

Listen to podcasts below:

Episode 29: Schools in Prison

Read the full transcript here


Dyjuan Tatro and Wes Caines’ Book Recommendations

Dyjuan Tatro’s Guest Book recommendation: Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair by Danielle Sered
Wes Caines’ Guest Book recommendation: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Justice in America is available on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Sticher, GooglePlay Music, Spotify, and LibSyn RSS.

 


Bonus: Interviewing the creators of College Behind Bars

In this bonus episode, Josie Duffy Rice and her co-host Derecka Purnell talk to Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, the creators of College Behind BarsCollege Behind Bars, which was directed by Novick and produced by Botstein, is a four-episode documentary series about the Bard Prison Initiative, one of the most innovative and challenging prison education programs in the country. Josie and Derecka talk to Sarah and Lynn about the years they spent making the film, what they learned, and the future of prison education in America.

Read the full transcript here.

Additional Resources copy and links: 

To watch College Behind Bars, find out more at PBS. You can also watch it on Netflix.

More information about BPI can be found here.

The Prison Policy Initiative has a wealth of resources on education in prisons.

For more information about programs that currently exist, check out the Prison Studies Project, which can be found here.

Op-Ed – The right to learn behind bars: Encouraging college in prison reduces recidivism and helps society

BPI student raises his hand in a classroom.

BPI students in the classroom. (Pete Mauney)

By Dyjuan Tatro
Opinion Contributor

The movement for criminal justice reform in New York has made some progress lately. The Legislature eliminated cash bail for most low-level offenses and passed broad discovery and speedy trial reforms. The governor has begun to grant clemency, albeit in a limited manner. In New York City, the City Council has voted to close Rikers Island.

Yet so much more needs to be done.

To date, the criminal justice reform movement in New York has been focused on sending fewer people to prison and getting some people who should not be there out, but little is happening to equip people who are incarcerated for life back in their communities when they’re released.

The overwhelming majority of these individuals will be released from prison with only a bus ticket and $40 in their pocket. That’s it.

It should come as no surprise that 40% of them will be back in prison within three years. The rest will struggle to find housing, jobs and a place in society.

My story was different. On Aug. 10, 2017, I was released from prison after having served 12 years. I didn’t just have a bus ticket and $40; I was a Bard College student.

Two weeks later, I began taking advanced math courses and working on my senior project. By the following May, 41 weeks and one day later, I graduated from Bard College with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. I walked across the stage on the college campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, and Bard President Leon Botstein handed me my diploma.

That summer, I went to work on Sean Patrick Maloney’s attorney general campaign as his criminal justice policy adviser. I then went on to be a project manager for a major software developer. Today, I am the government affairs officer at the Bard Prison Initiative.

What made these opportunities possible for me? A liberal arts education. I applied to BPI in 2013. I took the entrance exam, sat through the interview, and then sat in my cell each day hoping for an acceptance letter. It finally came. That moment forever altered the course of my life.

For the next four years, I worked harder than ever. I took a full course load, four or five classes each semester. My courses were rigorous and identical to those offered to students on Bard’s main campus. I joined the debate team. As a member of the debate team, my teammates and I defeated Harvard in 2015.

Unfortunately, most people incarcerated in New York State won’t have the same types of opportunities as I did, not while inside nor when they get out.

The 1994 Crime Bill ended federal Pell Grant eligibility for people in prison. Soon thereafter, New York, along with many other states, ended tuition assistance to incarcerated people. As a result, the number of college-in-prison programs offered nationally dropped from about 800 to fewer than 10.

Federal and state legislators ended these programs despite the fact that people who receive a college education in prison are the least likely to return. The recidivism rate for BPI alumni is only 4%10 times lower than the New York average.

New York State spends $69,000 a year to keep someone incarcerated. It costs BPI only $9,000 a year to educate its students. Comprehensive studies have shown that, for every dollar a state spends on higher education in prison, it saves at least four times that much on reincarceration costs.

Quite simply, college in prison saves us money. But it’s more than just a matter of dollars and cents. Providing educational opportunities in prison can turn something designed only to be punitive into something transformative, and that’s worth so much more to our communities and society as a whole. Yet, of the 46,000 people currently imprisoned across New York State, fewer than 900 have access to higher education right now.

If more incarcerated women and men had the same type of opportunity I had, who knows what they would achieve. I’m willing to bet that they would defy common expectations.

Tatro is government affairs officer for the Bard Prison Initiative.

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