Obama’s Plan to Restore Pell Grants for Prisoners - WSJ

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration’s plan to restore funding for in-prison college programs won praise from inmate advocates Tuesday, alongside allegations that officials are ignoring the will of Congress and eschewing the needs of law-abiding students.

A 1994 law prohibits inmates at state and federal prisons from receiving Pell grants, the main form of government aid for low-income college students. Before then, prisoners could use the grants to cover tuitions, books and other education-related expenses for courses they took while incarcerated.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the administration planned to temporarily make Pell grants available to some prisoners. An Education Department official confirmed the plan Tuesday, describing it as a limited pilot program that would call for proposals from colleges and universities to deliver courses in prisons. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch are set to formally unveil the program at a Maryland prison on Friday.

“The administration believes equipping incarcerated individuals with the skills they need to successfully re-enter the community is one of the most powerful and cost-effective methods to ensure they avoid future contact with the justice system and become productive members of society,” an Education Department official said Tuesday.

The Obama administration can’t lift the ban without the approval of Congress, but it plans to use an arcane provision of the Higher Education Act that allows it to temporarily waive rules as part of an experiment to study their effectiveness. Under the plan, a limited number of colleges would deliver courses at prisons, potentially helping thousands of prisoners, while providing data on recidivism.

Pell grants cover up to $5,775 a year in education expenses per person, and under the Obama administration plan the money would go directly to colleges.

Inmate advocates have spent years seeking to overturn the ban through Congress but have consistently run into opposition from lawmakers, including conservatives who bristle at the notion of helping convicted criminals at a time of government deficits.

Glenn E. Martin, an ex-offender who co-founded the nonprofit Education from the Inside Out Coalition, said the administration’s move represented a breakthrough for groups like his that have argued covering upfront costs will save the government money in the long run by reducing recidivism and the overall prison population.

“We already understand that education works” for reducing recidivism, Mr. Martin said, citing various studies. But he said lawmakers are loath to anger constituents. He said numerous lawmakers have told him privately: “I totally get this, I believe in it. But what do I do when I get a constituent telling me, ‘I can’t afford to have my kid going to college.’”

A top House Republican, Education Committee Chairman John Kline (Minn.), said he was open to debate about the merits of college aid for inmates, but criticized the administration for not going through Congress. “Unfortunately the administration has chosen once again to stifle an important debate by acting unilaterally and without regard for the law,” he said in a statement.

Rep. Chris Collins (R., N.Y.) argued Tuesday that federal education funds should be spent on law-abiding families struggling to cover college costs. He said he planned to reintroduce a bill dubbed the “Kids Before Cons Act” to block federal funds from going to in-prison education.

“The Obama administration’s governing strategy is simple: Identify people who have broken the law, reward them with taxpayer dollars and penalize hardworking Americans,” Mr. Collins said. “Americans won’t tolerate putting criminals’ educations before the millions of hardworking students struggling to obtain a college education.”

A group of congressional Democrats, meanwhile, previously proposed lifting the ban on Pell grants for prisoners.

Rep. Donna Edwards (D., Md.), who is backing a bill to lift the ban on Pell grants for inmates, said in-prison college courses reduce the chances that inmates will return after serving their sentences.

“That’s the surest way to make sure that people can succeed” after they’ve been released from prison, she said. “If we continue to do those things we’ll ensure a lower recidivism rate.”

Roger Pilon of the libertarian Cato Institute questioned the administration’s method for implanting the program. He pointed out that Congress explicitly forbids prisoner Pell grants as part of the 1994 crime bill.

“It appears to be just one more example of the Obama administration playing fast and loose with the law,” Mr. Pilon said.

Key details of the administration’s plan are still unknown, including how many and which types of convicts would be eligible.

Two people briefed on the plan have said the program would likely last between three to five years, and the price tag would be relatively small—in the millions of dollars. By comparison, the government awarded roughly $34 billion in Pell grants in the latest academic year.

The effort is part of a broader push by the Obama administration to overhaul the criminal-justice system. Advocates of criminal-justice reform say educating prisoners gives them something positive to focus on while incarcerated and greatly increases the odds that they will find a job and avoid a lifestyle of crime once they leave prison.

“Although statistics vary from state to state, recidivism rates are well above 50% for prisoners. But that figure drops to very low single digits if the person in prison emerges with a college degree,” said Robert Ferguson, a Columbia University law professor and author of “Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment.”

“Education, on both sides of the bars, is the greatest single tool for dealing with the problems that prisons face everywhere in the U.S.,” he said.

The $34 million in Pell grants awarded to prisoners in 1993 amounted to less than a 10th of 1% of total grant money issued that year, according to figures provided by the Education Department that year. Prisoners serving life sentences or on death row weren’t eligible for Pell grants.

Prisoners as a group have less education than the general U.S. population. A 2003 study by the Justice Department’s research arm, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, found that more than half of state inmates ages 24 and younger hadn’t completed high school or its equivalent. Only 4% of state inmates in that age group had received higher education.

A 2001 study by the Correctional Education Association, conducted for the Education Department, found that education behind bars reduced the likelihood of incarceration by at least 10%.

A Texas Tech University study of inmates in the state who exited prison during the 2010-11 school year found that those who completed a college academic program while behind bars had a 21% lower rate of recidivism than those who did not. The graduates were also more likely to be in a wage-earning class three years after their release.

Older studies from Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, Alabama, Wisconsin and New York have also shown correlations between higher education and reduced recidivism.