MASSACHUSETTS - Boston University Prison Education Program

c/o Undergraduate Student Services
Department of Applied Social Science
Jenifer Drew, Ph.D., Director
808 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA
617-353-2000, direct: 617-243-2196


Population Served: Incarcerated men and women in BU program at MCI/Norfolk; MCI/Framingham; MCI/Bay State and a few Harvard sociology students

Program Description: The Boston University Prison Education Program was founded by labor organizer, tenant activist, and poet Elizabeth Barker. Together with BU President John Silber, Barker worked to have the Boston University Prison Education Program offer its first credit-bearing college courses at MCI/Norfolk, in 1972. In 1989, the Prison Education Program expanded to a second medium-security prison for men (MCI/Bay State), and by 1991 included MCI/Framingham Massachusetts’ only penal institution for women. BU continues to be a nationally recognized leader for its contribution to the lives of prisoners in the Program, and by extension, its contribution to the prisons they inhabit, the families they left behind, and the communities to which they will return.