One of the best ways we can transform the impressions of people in prison is to make meaningful education opportunities available to everyone in our correctional facilities.
Imagine a world where every single incarcerated person came home with transferable skills and a pathway to meaningful employment?
That world becomes possible through access to meaningful education.
The Vera Institute of Justice has been a leader in researching, communicating, and pressing for education throughout our prison system. This week they released a new report describing their “Pathways” program which worked with Federal and state prison administrations to make post-secondary education available to incarcerated people.
One of the key findings was that, in addition to helping transform the potential of people in prisons, providing meaningful educational opportunities also transformed the way everyone in the system looked at the people in prison.
We are currently experiencing a mostly invisible human rights crisis in prisons across our country (mostly in the South), investing in education seems like the least we can do to transform the narrative.
