Gender Inequity in Prison Education Limits Opportunity

In the summer of 2023, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it was expanding the Pell Grant program to once again cover qualified students who are incarcerated.

At Jobs for the Future (JFF), we believe this represents an important step forward that could help catalyze our efforts to normalize opportunity for people with records of arrests, conviction, or incarceration. According to the Vera Institute of Justice, research shows that postsecondary education in corrections facilities is a cost-effective way to improve outcomes for students and their families and communities.

However, expanding access to Pell Grants doesn’t equate to universal access to education for everyone who’s incarcerated in the United States. Only about 35% of U.S. corrections facilities offer college courses, according to the Vera Institute. And even at institutions that do offer postsecondary education programs, there are steep gender inequities in access to these programs.

In the 2020-21 academic year, women made up just 15% of the people pursuing college educations while incarcerated in programs offered by 64 of the 67 colleges participating in the Education Department’s Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, while men accounted for 85%, according to a 2022 Vera Institute report. And just 7% of women enrolled in those programs earned credentials that year, compared with 15% of the men.

Moreover, for people who are incarcerated—especially women, and women of color in particular—a successful postsecondary education experience involves more than earning a degree. Inequities for women who have records continue to exist long after they’re released from prison. Many face unemployment and rarely are able to find work in their chosen fields. Some also may not have access to safe or affordable housing, transportation, health care, or other social supports necessary for a successful reentry.

Many women also lack support from their families and communities. Research shows that education while incarcerated directly correlates to higher rates of employment and economic advancement after release.

First-Person Accounts of Inequities

Disparities in access to higher education in prison for males and females are prevalent throughout the United States. And when women who are incarcerated aren’t offered the same opportunities of their male peers, their opportunities for economic advancement are hindered.

The first-person accounts below highlight the experiences of women who currently participate or have previously participated in a postsecondary education programs while incarcerated. Their names have been changed to protect their identity for fear of retaliation by prison staff or education program leaders. 

Playing Catch-Up With the Men

I enrolled in my first college class while at a state reentry facility for women. My college program had been established in 2016—which was 10 years after college education programs were established in male facilities in my state. While many men were completing their master’s degrees, women were a decade behind. [Editor’s note: Advocates and state officials chose to introduce the first education program at a men’s facility because the goal was to reach as many people as possible with the initial effort, and that facility had the largest population.]

For two years, women only had the option of enrolling in associate’s degree programs; bachelor-level programs weren’t offered until 2018. However, these opportunities weren’t available to people incarcerated in the women’s prison in the state’s maximum-security facility. They couldn’t enroll in college programs until they were transferred to the reentry center, a minimum-security community custody facility. It wasn’t until 2021 that women at the maximum-security center had access to higher education.

Prison education programming in the state where I was incarcerated is progressive compared to many other prison education programs in the United States.

Men and women in undergraduate programs attend class virtually and use computers to communicate electronically with advisors and professors. Some students are able to keep their computers in their rooms, which is especially helpful for working students who use evenings or weekends to complete coursework. Small nuances like these have a great impact on an individual’s ability to be successful.

However, more work needs to be done to ensure equitable access to higher education for women. To date, there are no women in a graduate program; however male graduate students can enroll in out-of-state programs.

Challenges With Staffing, Lack of Support

Before I entered prison, I didn’t know what it would be like, and I wasn’t aware that I would have opportunities for growth and development and opportunities to further my education and learn better parenting styles.

But I don’t think I benefitted from those opportunities as much as I could have because the lack of empathy, guidance, and services I experienced with the education coordinator at my facility. And the lack of structural support in the last year of incarceration has made my experience quite negative.

Our facility lost a tutor who was a significant resource for the women. On more than one occasion, the department of corrections staff kept our tutor waiting outside for hours. Unfortunately, the tutor decided she couldn’t work under these conditions and hasn’t returned. After the loss of our tutor, the prison education program began to go downhill.

There’s only one education coordinator for the state’s two women’s facilities, and that individual is overwhelmed with multiple responsibilities. However, each of the men’s facilities has a team of educational staff. That’s unfortunate, because so many women want to improve their lives through education and are denied those opportunities. The inability to get required textbooks by the start of the semester has created problems for multiple women in various parts of the facility. This could be improved if the staff and the women had more support and assistance from education staff.

Staffing shortages and a lack of assistance in tutoring and consistent communication with professors about the issues we experience (for example, servers being audited and down for multiple days, limited access to Wi-Fi, and more) cause confusion and make it challenging to complete assignments on time.

A consistent schedule of when the education coordinator would be available would be gratefully appreciated and beneficial to the students. Proctored exams have been constantly delayed or called off because proctors aren’t available, forcing women to drop classes because they couldn’t take exams.

Education and vocational training are a priority because they lead to financial security, stability, and better lives, and they give women an opportunity to change and grow personally.

Inequities in Women’s Educational Staff

When I first arrived at the facility, women’s education was virtually nonexistent. Access to matriculated degree programs was reserved for residents housed at the women’s reentry center, which meant an extensive wait for those with time on their hands.

Through powerful partnerships and fervent advocacy, I was able to enroll from the higher security unit of women’s services, which resulted in a great level of investment in the expansion of access and opportunities for future students.

Today the women are doing well in their postsecondary and vocational pursuits, although lack of staffing can create situations where the women are still underserved and lacking in services. The ratio of student residents to education staff in women’s services is overwhelmingly high, leaving educational personnel with a difficult burden to shoulder.

Only one education person covers both the maximum- and minimum-security facilities. That’s a lot for one person.

Sent Back to Prison While Doing Research

I was doing a research paper for an information and library science degree. It was a community analysis assignment for a specific community library. This particular library was located in a community that had an airport. While doing research for the assignment, I was handcuffed and taken to segregation because the department of corrections staff believed I was planning an escape. Nobody inquired as to why I was researching the community.

Lack of Access to Pell Grants Delays Opportunities

I began my education in 2015, when I had to pay $30 a month to take a correspondence course through the mail. I wasn’t allowed to take any college courses at the facility where I am a resident. No courses were offered for business or veterinary medicine, which is my passion. I eventually found a school that would accept me and allowed me to make payments each month with my prison paycheck, and I set up a payment plan. Over time, I increased my payment, and in three years, I paid off the $1,100 course to receive my Veterinary Assistant certificate.

Unfortunately, I had to put my education on hold again. The facility once again had no college courses to offer me and didn’t know how to help me. I reached out to the previous school to pay for another correspondence class. I had to pay $3,000 out of my pocket, which took a long time.

In 2016, men in other facilities were receiving Pell Grants to pay for their educations through the Second Chance Pell Experiment. Fast-forward to last year, when that opportunity had reached my facility but I was informed that I still could not attend community college because I had too much time on my sentence. The school would not accept my FAFSA; however, I could take their free Pathways Certificate courses.

The Secret About Prison Education Programs

In this day and age, you would think that gender equity would exist in the United States. We are led to believe that we are all created equal. Let me tell you a secret that really is not so secret: Within the legal system, we are not all created equal. I currently reside [in a state facility] for women, and there is nothing equal about the system or the quality of education one can receive while here at the facility.

While the men are receiving master’s degrees and PhDs, the women are just getting started, including women residing in the medium security building. Although everyone is shouting “gender equality,” it only takes a place in our minds.

The women were being offered the standard classes (such as psychology and accounting), but those classes were offered infrequently and not to all residents, just to a select few. Women have much to offer and should be given the chance to take the same classes as the men or at least be offered the same programming as the men.

Things seem to have started to take a turn for the better, but we’re still behind no matter how fast we run to try and catch up. It’s an unsatisfying feeling seeing women being treated unequally.

Investments in Women’s Programs Must Be a Priority

As a result of the reinstatement of Pell Grants and other initiatives, investments in postsecondary education in correctional facilities have risen in recent years. However, women’s facilities often are the last to benefit from those investments. Even in states where postsecondary education in prison is a priority, changes are often implemented or piloted at men’s facilities first.

College in prison programs enable people to build valuable skills that can put them pathways to quality jobs with living wages when they rejoin their communities following incarceration. And participants’ chances for successful reentry improve with each new level of academic achievement they attain. In addition, education programs for people who are incarcerated pay dividends by contributing to lower recidivism rates: Every dollar spent on prison education reduces government expenditures on reincarceration by four to five dollars.

The Prison Policy Institute reports that women are the fastest growing population of people who are incarcerated. Yet, despite the increasing need for services for women, corrections facilities have been slow to implement changes.

And when programs do expand to include women’s facilities, participants inevitably encounter barriers, including enrollment difficulties, lack of access to learning materials, or delays in implementing student services.

Policymakers and corrections leaders at the state and federal levels must push for increased investments in postsecondary education in women’s correctional facilities now—not later.

If we want to create equitable opportunities for economic advancement through quality jobs for people with records, their families, and their communities, we must not overlook the more than 170,000 women who are incarcerated in U.S. federal, state, and local prisons and jails. They deserve the same fair chance that men have.