A biweekly newsletter about the intersection of higher education and criminal justice. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here are the highlights:

• A visit to WBEZ Chicago led to conversations with currently and formerly incarcerated students about the meaning of rehabilitation and what counts as higher education. 

• Our local reporter from WBEZ Lisa Kurian Phillip reports on a proposal in the Illinois legislature to restore state financial aid to incarcerated students amid concerns about federal funding rollbacks. 

• In a first-person essay, Kwaneta Harris questions the celebration of Black History Month in a system that sanitizes history education, bans books by Black authors, and prevents women’s access to basic health information. 

• ICYMI: Windward Community College is expanding its Hawaiian Studies degree to a private prison in Arizona that houses incarcerated men from Hawai‘i. 

Incarcerated people are told to rehabilitate themselves. But nobody will tell them how. 

Earlier this month, I spent a week in Chicago with my colleagues at WBEZ. It was a busy week with a visit to Sheridan Correctional Center, a community listening session with several formerly incarcerated people, and a snow storm. 

Thinking beyond rehabilitation

It was still dark (and frigid) when Alex Keefe and Lauren Frost from WBEZ’s Prisoncast! team picked me up outside my downtown hotel for the 1.5-hour journey to Sheridan. There we joined a class led by Lewis University teaching fellow Alex Negron, who is among the first incarcerated adjunct professors in the country.  

During our discussion, students challenged the concept of “rehabilitation.” One participant who had spent 33 years behind bars shared a story about the judge at his resentencing hearing. Despite the man’s extensive educational achievements, including college credits, numerous certificates from prison programs, and contributions to a published book, he said the judge delivered a devastating assessment: “‘Your education only establishes your intelligence. It does not establish your rehabilitation.’"

Another student, who had been incarcerated since he was a teenager, lamented the lack of opportunities for people with long sentences. “The state of Illinois said that I was in prison, not seeking an education, not attempting to work, sitting idle as though it was my decision," he said. 

Another man expressed frustration about the lack of clear criteria: "In the 21 years I've been in, the definition of rehabilitation…has never actually been communicated to me." In the absence of any official guidance, he said he’d developed his own criteria: "For me, it means I'm just trying to be a better person at night, whenever my head hits the pillow, than I was whenever I woke up that morning, and I hope the right people notice it."

Later that week at our Chicago listening session, Renaldo Hudson, education director at the Illinois Prison Project, also advocated for a more expansive view of education that recognizes that “rehabilitation” happens in many forms—not just through formal degrees. “The language of higher education tends to marginalize a lot of people because the majority of people inside don't have access to this higher education, but they're [still] very educated," he said. 

Hudson described how he had helped foster a learning environment during his decades behind bars by creating his own program. "We went from being locked down all day to turning the day room into classrooms," he said. Yet as he noted, incarcerated people rarely get credit for these cultural shifts.

Finding purpose through education

Many students also connected education to their family relationships. One father explained, "I decided to enroll into college after I acquired my GED... to prove to my son that no matter what you do in life, you can always decide to choose to do better."

In one particularly moving moment, a student described how he had used the prison tablet system to connect with his son through music. "My son failed honors piano in high school, and I didn't know he knew how to play the piano," he explained. The father found piano tutorials on his prison tablet and began teaching his son remotely. "I knew I failed in third grade, and I didn't want him to be comfortable with failing. I wanted him to be comfortable with the idea of, ‘You failed. Now we can get better and move on.’"

His son eventually passed the piano class. "It gave me an opportunity to continue to be a father to my child with this big gap between us," he reflected. "Music is now a big part of his life in high school."

For many, education also offers a way to reclaim their own narratives. One teaching fellow at Sheridan explained, "By you being able to take control of your story and taking advantage of opportunities to tell your story, that's what gives you power. ... I allowed everybody else to tell my story, except myself, and it wasn't until I started to take power of my own narrative that great things started to happen."

The theme of narrative control also came up repeatedly back in Chicago. Since his release in 2022, Angel Pantoja said he has shared his story over 100 times to legislators, universities, and various audiences. He now works for Illinois’ lieutenant governor helping people navigate reentry. Speaking opportunities in prison classrooms taught participants how to tell their stories in a positive way.

Information barriers inside prison walls

When we asked the Sheridan students about their biggest challenges related to college and career, many pointed to the lack of basic information about professional paths. "We need more access to information about career goals," one student said. "If I was able to get online [I could] look up Indeed and see what the criteria is for jobs in my field... we need to know if there are limitations or not, and we don't have access to that."

With formal education opportunities limited, self-education becomes essential. Students described creating their own opportunities - from sharing legal knowledge to forming learning communities around shared interests like Magic: The Gathering card games, yoga practice, or cooking techniques.

"We had to teach one another, because nobody else was going to teach us,” one man said. “Nobody else wanted us to do anything and be positive and thrive." 

Several men said they were interested in entrepreneurship training and had a need for financial literacy. One even mentioned a credit union that allows incarcerated people to open accounts. But they also stressed challenges in getting the necessary documentation for ID verification. We met one student who said he had created his own LLC while inside with the goal of promoting the work of incarcerated artists, writers, poets.

One teaching fellow also noted how exposure to educational options had expanded students' thinking. He said that when he was growing up, career options to him meant being a rapper, a basketball player, or working for the city: "Looking at the Lewis University folder to see the different degree programs they offer, it [was] like, 'Oh, if I would have known some of these things when I was younger, I probably could have dreamed a little bit different.'"

Career transitions after release

At our Chicago listening session later in the week, formerly incarcerated participants shared insights about the professional challenges they faced after release. Many stressed the importance of learning professional norms and communication. "We lose some of our social skills," said Jamal Bakr, who was released at the end of December. 

Despite these challenges, many have built successful careers that were bolstered by experience with education inside. Jimmy Soto, a graduate of Northwestern's prison education program and the longest-serving exoneree in Illinois history, has leveraged public speaking training into paid speaking engagements at top universities. Soto is now preparing to go to law school, and others have moved into policy work, violence prevention, and government positions.

The formerly incarcerated participants also stressed the importance of system-impacted people leading reentry efforts. "I want us system-impacted folks to be the leaders in reentry, because no one else is going to understand our journey or our pain or our healing like us," Pantoja said. 

Related: WBEZ and Open Campus teamed up to bring information about higher education inside to incarcerated readers in Illinois.

Illinois weighs restoring state financial aid to students in prison

Researchers have found that higher education is one of the most effective ways to prevent people who have been incarcerated from re-offending. Yet just 615 out of 29,470 incarcerated people in Illinois are enrolled in college classes, according to the Education Justice Project based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

But legislation reintroduced in the Illinois legislature this session could expand access by restoring state financial aid for incarcerated students. That funding could prompt more universities to bring their classes into prisons.

Advocates say passing the legislation is of particular importance in this moment. Many fear the Trump administration will cut federal funding for incarcerated students, which was recently reinstated. State funding could balance out that potential loss and, supporters hope, get college programs into prisons in all corners of the state.

Read the full story. 

Related: “A milestone in New York.”

First Person: ‘They ban books by Black authors. Then they tell us to celebrate Black History Month.’

Kwaneta Harris, a writer incarcerated in Texas, questions the celebration of Black History Month in a system that erases history and bans books. 

While recent headlines focus on the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across America's higher education system, such erasure of diverse perspectives is nothing new behind prison walls. As state legislatures and boards of regents debate whose histories deserve telling, those of us behind bars have long faced explicit bans on texts that challenge dominant narratives or examine racial and gender justice. 

As an incarcerated Black woman, the hypocrisy is particularly stark. The “celebration” of Black History Month entails posters of MLK, George Washington Carver, and Rosa Parks plastered around the education building. The display in the library has lots of kente cloth borders and a table with self-help, religious books by “safe” Black authors. 

This is the same prison library that bans works by Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, bell hooks and other Black female intellectuals under the guise of preventing "critical race theory indoctrination." The selective censorship of Black feminist authors reflects the system’s fear of Black women who speak their truths. 

When Kimberlé Crenshaw's intersectionality framework is banned, when Nikole Hannah-Jones's 1619 Project is deemed dangerous, when Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and other literary masterpieces are labeled "inappropriate," the message is clear: our full humanity threatens the established order.

Read the rest of Kwaneta's essay. 

Related: “In solitary confinement, your neighbors are your teachers.”

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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