Just Education: A Project Exploring the Higher Educational Experiences of Students with Criminal Records

• In Event: Justice Impacted Students and Higher Education

Abstract

The approximately 1 in 4 people in the US who live with a criminal record occupy some form of what Reuben Miller (2021) terms an ‘alternate legal reality.’ This involves a panoply of statutory and bureaucratic restrictions that significantly limit participation in the economy, in social and civic opportunities, and most brutally, in family life. Education has been found to be an especially effective pathway to address some of these impediments, improving individual life outcomes as well as the health of wider communities. Yet while we have a substantial literature on the benefits of education in prisons and jails, far less attention has been paid to the experiences of students with criminal records once enrolled in higher education in the community. Beyond access barriers, this qualitative research and advocacy project explores how higher educational institutions maintain or militate against carceral exclusions, and the changes that may be needed to allow universities to become more equitable, generative, and ultimately more just environments.

Author

• Jessica Bird, University of Illinois Chicago