A biweekly newsletter about employment and education during and after incarceration. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

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• EDWINS, a Cleveland-based culinary training program focused on formerly incarcerated people, has expanded its program with a 34-hour digital curriculum available on prison tablets. It’s the latest expansion of a program that has spent nearly 15 years making the case that culinary training can be a path out of incarceration. This story was copublished with our local partner, Signal Ohio. 

EDWINS built a reentry program in Cleveland. It’s expanded its renowned culinary training nationwide.

Drew Hanchett has always loved to cook. So when he found a culinary curriculum on his tablet while sitting in a cot in a county jail in Tucson, Arizona — videos on French knife skills, sauces, butchery — he worked through all of it. "I was so happy to find a course on something I was already passionate about," he said. 

Hanchett had no idea that, more than a year later, completing that curriculum would land him in Cleveland, enrolled in an in-person culinary training program. Hanchett is one of about 120 people EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute has flown to Cleveland after completing the program's tablet-based curriculum. The course is now available through Edovo, an educational app available on prison tablets in almost every state. 

The digital content is the latest expansion of a program that has spent nearly 15 years making the case that culinary training — paired with housing, jobs and wraparound support — can be a path out of incarceration.

Those like Hanchette who complete the digital course and want to pursue the in-person training can apply to come to Cleveland, with flights sponsored by the Cleveland Browns football team.

The program is the brainchild of Brandon Chrostowski, a Detroit native who was arrested as a teenager, got probation instead of prison time, and was mentored by a chef whom he credits with changing the course of his life. He spent years cooking in New York, Chicago and Paris before settling in Cleveland — which he chose, he has said, because the data pointed to it as one of the most distressed cities in the country.

"There's a way to change the world through food and hospitality," he said, "because it changed mine."

EDWINS started as a culinary class at Grafton Correctional Institution, a men's minimum security prison, in 2011. It eventually became what it is today, a community hub in Cleveland's Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood — a butcher shop, a bakery, a culinary library, student housing, and a French restaurant that recently reopened in the old Nighttown location in  Cleveland Heights. Around 1,000 students have graduated since the program started, according to program staff. The program was also the subject of Knife Skills, a 2018 Oscar-nominated documentary available free on YouTube.

During the pandemic, electronic tablets became more common in prisons across the country. They aren't connected to the internet, but allow incarcerated people to message friends and family and access approved entertainment and educational content. The EDWINS tablet curriculum introduces people inside to the fundamentals of French cooking through videos, reading assignments and tests. "It's giving people a good foundation on how to cook, what to cook, how to visualize it," Chrostowski said. 

Hanchett, who already had experience as a home cook, learned things like how to make fresh pasta. "I wrote all the recipes down,” he said. “But what it did most was set me up for what they taught in person — how they make their recipes. I already knew how they did it and why." 

Hanchett arrived in Ohio in January and is due to graduate in August. When he got to Cleveland, he kept waiting for a catch. It never came. The in-person program confirmed something he had always wondered about himself — he had been a home cook for years, praised by everyone around him, but never knew if they were just being nice. EDWINS, he said, answered that question. He's planning to stay and work in Ohio after graduation.

Hanchett's experience is part of what Derrick Speights, EDWINS' director of reentry services, has come to expect from students who travel to Cleveland for the program. He spoke during a tour of the bakery and butcher shop at the National Conference for Higher Education in Prison in April.

"The people that I fly here usually don't have a whole lot of problems," he said. Fewer distractions, less pull from their old lives.

"Every piece — the butcher shop, the bakery, the library — all of this is based off a student's need," Speights said. "Brandon has always said, 'If one student needs it, every student needs it.'"

Speights puts the job placement rate of EDWINS graduates at 95%. Some graduates go on to work in top restaurants in Cleveland, though not everyone ends up working in the restaurant industry — and Speights says that’s fine.

“Culinary arts might just be a safety net for you,” he said. “Times get hard, you get laid off, you run into a restaurant, you make your money. That’s OK with us. The goal is that you don’t go back to prison.”

Read the full story. 

News & views

A new Prison Policy Initiative briefing examines the 17 states (plus D.C.) that have eliminated discretionary parole and finds their alternative release mechanisms, including earned and good time policies, are universally underutilized for getting people out earlier, particularly in states with strict truth-in-sentencing laws. The briefing builds on PPI's earlier report that we covered on how parole boards treat education, which found that achievements like degrees are often discounted in release decisions. 

Wisconsin's prison population is approaching a record high, with women's facilities now running at 178% of capacity, according to a new tracker from our local partner Wisconsin Watch. The piece notes that overcrowding and staffing shortages mean prisons scale back vocational training and higher education to focus on the basics — even though, as one formerly incarcerated source put it, more than 90% of Wisconsin's prisoners will eventually be released. 

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 Bluesky, LinkedIn, or Instagram. To reach me via snail mail, you can write to: Open Campus, 2460 17th Avenue #1015, Santa Cruz, CA 95062.

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