Higher Education Justice for Incarcerated Students

• In Event: Research Dangerously: A Scholarship of Consequence and Pushing Barriers in Educational Research and Praxis

Abstract

Purpose: Pulling from my nearly 20 years of practice in this area, I hope to contribute to the dialogue in ways that help us unpack what it means that upon release from corrections facilities, men and women are overwhelmingly unemployed and underprepared educationally for today’s workforce (SCEA, n.d.). Given the number of jobs requiring only a high school diploma continues to decline drastically and the US economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based, the corresponding need for some form of postsecondary education for incarcerated students becomes essential (SCEA, n.d). However, we must trouble research grounded only through recidivism and workforce development frameworks which oversimplify and reduce the potential impact and import education has on the lives on incarcerated students.

Mode of Inquiry: Using Nash’s (2004) scholarly personal narrative approach I intend to use my time to share perspectives on the relationship between higher education research and incarcerated students. It is important that we include scholar-practitioners and their experiences and expertise to inform future scholarship and consequently, the work of practitioners in this area.

Data Sources/Evidence: I am founder of the Second Chance Educational Alliance (SCEA) and my experiences there will serve as the source of evidence and data given my direct work with the population in question. The SCEA aims to provide formerly incarcerated men and women with the tools necessary to become fully engaged and contributing citizens. Understanding that education is a well-documented pathway to career enhancement, but beyond this SCEA provides participating students with access to postsecondary opportunities designed to improve their chances of thriving in multiple areas of their lives.

Significance/Implications: Many conversations about the pursuit of higher education on the part of incarcerated students focus on a research paradigm anchored in recidivism and workforce development (see Davis et al, 2013; Bozick et al, 2018; Oakford et al, 2019) The flaw in this framework, aside from the fact that it consistently ignores the collateral consequences of conviction, is that it is reductionist. The current research paradigm leaves little room to explore the myriad reasons people pursue postsecondary education and the outcomes that matter to them. Strengthening family bonds, improving one's critical thinking, and broadening one's horizons rank highly among incarcerated student motivation to attain postsecondary credentials and our research paradigm, and the rhetoric that accompanies it, should reflect such. This work, and others like it, can only advance with corresponding research that centers harm reduction as its central approach to the work which is a critical imperative for a population that is already disempowered in this particular way.

Author

• Erin Corbett, Second Chance Educational Alliance, Inc.