A biweekly newsletter about the future of postsecondary education in prisons. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Before we sign off for the holidays, we wanted to let you know that from now until Dec. 31, donations to Open Campus of up to $1,000 are triple-matched. Your support helps me continue reporting on higher ed in prisons. Make your tax-deductible donation today.

Short on time? We’re revisiting an essay by Tomas Keen, a writer in Washington. He wrote about how his access to education became a matter of luck when he was transferred to a Washington prison that had a college program open to people with long sentences.

ICYMI: Kunlyna Tauch, an incarcerated writer and student in California, wrote an essay about how getting his own laptop after 17 years in prison changed everything. The story was copublished with Slate. Plus, see more responses from our prison tablet survey on our Instagram stories here and here. 

Got a story idea on prison education? Reach out to me at [email protected] if you have thoughts about what you’d like to see covered in 2024.

A year of inside voices

As 2023 comes to a close, I wanted to revisit the very first essay we published by an incarcerated writer almost two years ago. At that time, we had about 250 subscribers to this e-newsletter and I was printing out the emails and hand addressing envelopes to about 10 folks inside. Now, this email lands in 1,300 inboxes and we send print copies to the same number of inside readers, plus a number of libraries and prison education programs. We are also happy to share that College Inside is now on Edovo, an app on both GTL and Securus tablets. It makes this newsletter available to thousands more incarcerated readers at no cost to them.

Since we published Tomas’ essay in January 2022, we’ve worked with a dozen other incarcerated writers such as Kwaneta Harris, who wrote about how young women sent to prison as teens continue to struggle with basic literacy. Lyle C. May in North Carolina wrote about how earning his degree on death row was the ultimate act of resistance, while Donovan Diego reflected on the challenges that incarcerated GED students with disabilities faced in Minnesota. 

This last year, I also spent a lot of time talking to those who have spent decades inside, becoming mentors who encourage others to pursue higher education. Kathy Tyler told me about why, at age 87, she’s still taking college classes, and Lonnie Morris shared how he became one of the first men at San Quentin to earn a bachelor’s degree. And when Pell Grants came back this summer, we asked four people to share stories about prison education before 1994. 

I thought Tomas’ essay was an appropriate way to end the year. He wrote about how his access to education became a matter of luck when he was transferred to a Washington prison that had a college program open to people with long sentences. (I wrote more about that program, University Beyond Bars, and what happened to its students last year when the prison hosting it shut down, in a story we copublished with the Seattle Times). Tomas is now at another prison that doesn’t have a bachelor’s program, but with support from family and money he earns from writing he’s now only one class away from finally finishing that degree through Adams State University’s print-based program. 

I wish you very happy holidays and hope you enjoy reading (or re-reading) Tomas’ essay. 

Related coverage: 

++ “Reflections on a year of cover prison education”
++ What happens to students when a prison closes

“Eventually luck got a hold of me”

by Tomas Keen

As a kid in Washington State, shuffling nervously into Miss DeVries’s first-grade class, I had no idea how decisions being made in the other Washington that year would affect the future of my education.

That year, in 1994, the government was gutting funds for college courses in prison, part of a “nothing works” narrative that was then dominating discussions about the criminal-legal system. Believing every dollar spent on higher education in prison was a dollar sent down the toilet, federal lawmakers passed a crime bill that, while expanding the carceral system, made “status as a prisoner” a disqualifier for Pell funding. The barely tacit message coming out of Congress: in the eyes of the government, prisons may be worthy of investment⁠—but prisoners are not.

As a six-year-old with no expectation of future confinement, caring little for prison and less for what programs are offered there probably seems reasonable. But it wasn’t. Before leaving elementary school, I began my hardly unique path to prison: I was the victim of abuse⁠—the sort that’s just not polite to discuss with strangers. And from then on, churning beneath a placid surface, I was scared, I was isolated, I was on the verge of being broken. For years I struggled before finding solace in the bottom of a small ziplock bag. And what happened next is of little surprise to anyone: a 20-year prison sentence for first-degree assault.

By the time I entered prison in 2010, the fallout from gutted funding was everywhere. Scarce opportunities had soured the culture in prison. Without constructive outlets, many prisoners who otherwise would have excelled were left bored and stationary⁠—and you know what they say about idle hands.

Old timers I met spoke of days when educational programs filled every room in the school buildings. But all I saw were classrooms retrofitted as office space.

Still suffering from first-grade naivety, I spent my first six years buying into and perpetuating the toxic culture clouding the facilities. I bounced from place to place, spending large chunks of time in solitary confinement. My stints in general population were typically at notoriously violent facilities like the Washington State Penitentiary⁠—known officially as the “West Complex,” colloquially as the “Wild West.” These were places where opportunities⁠—for anything other than a fight⁠—were few.

Eventually luck got a hold of me and I was transferred to the Washington State Reformatory. And there I learned that even after the government gave up on college for prisoners, many private funders did not. At this facility, a college-in-prison program⁠—University Beyond Bars⁠—operated entirely by private funding. I quickly signed up and was soon neck deep in a smattering of liberal-arts courses: Social Problems, International Relations, English Composition, Oceanography, etc.

In the classroom I found a diverse group of students working together, solving problems, and developing new outlooks on life. I also found relationships being forged across boundaries that, at other facilities, due to pressured adherence to a racialized and predatory prison code, would have been impossible. It was the first time in years I sat in a room and felt a sense of normalcy. It was the first time I had seen a place resembling what the old timers spoke about.

Having access to vibrant college programs is what drives success for people in prison⁠—my own life is testament to this. It’s no coincidence that my transformation to good catapulted when I arrived at WSR. Whereas before I spent days huddled up with other prisoners, scheming over how to win more power on the yard, now I huddle around dayroom tables helping fellow students with homework. It’s also no coincidence that one of my mom’s happiest memories is watching me deliver the keynote address at UBB’s annual graduation in 2019, just moments after I received my very own degree. (Search “Tomas Keen” on YouTube.)

With my own life as evidence, I saw the value of an opportunity to attend college classes⁠—and I wanted to give back. Some fellow prisoners and I established a grantwriting team for UBB and set out to fund the program. And while we were wildly successful, winning more than a million dollars in just over a year, times were anything but good. Every day we were met with the challenge of needing to prove the value of college-in-prison programs to representatives of charitable foundations who, in some cases, likely learned everything they knew about prison from Law and Order.

In these moments of worry I remember being so frustrated. Sitting in UBB’s on-premise office, I’d wonder out loud, “At the end of the day, the government justifies holding people as prisoners by claiming that services provided during confinement lead to rehabilitation. And it’s this justification that allows society to feel less morally icky about living outside the wire in a carceral state.”

After a few moments of silence, I’d turn to my fellow grantwriters and ask, “How, then, can it be anything but the government’s responsibility to provide the services that actually rehabilitate? Why are private funders being left to hold the bag?”

Almost as if people from the government were listening, Congress has returned Pell eligibility to prisoners. And states, too, are getting involved. Washington recently passed HB 1044 that allows for funding up to a bachelor’s degree and contains fewer barriers than Pell, ensuring that nearly every prisoner in my state will have an opportunity to become a college student. Everywhere we look, governments are now working to reproduce the successes of privately funded programs.

Government funding brings all sorts of benefits because it simultaneously brings all sorts of added directives for prison administrators. At least in Washington State, administrators are now legally required to assist with application and planning processes, support people with learning differences, and consider providing access to secure internet. All of these will undoubtedly advance the quality of college education for prisoners.

Still, there remains an indispensable role for private funding. Even when public sentiment rallied around the “nothing works” narrative, private funders held the line and committed to recognizing that all people, even prisoners, are worthy of investment. And this commitment remains just as vital today, as the different government funding streams have varying criteria and barriers, some even excluding people based on prior loans, sentence length, or citizenship status. Filling the gaps left by government programs is the future of private funders.

Tomas Keen is an incarcerated writer from Washington State. His work has been featured in Inquest, The Crime Report, the Economist and Process, a journal at the University of Washington. He can be contacted on Jpay or at [email protected].

Let’s connect

Please connect if you have story ideas or just want to share your experience with prison education programs as a student or educator. You can always reach me at [email protected] or on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram. To reach me via snail mail, you can write to: Open Campus, 2460 17th Avenue #1015, Santa Cruz, CA 95062.

We know that not everyone has access to email, so if you’d like to have a print copy College Inside sent to an incarcerated friend or family member, you can sign them up here. We also publish the PDFs of our print newsletter on the Open Campus website.

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