Students and Jail

It started after my stroke in February 2015. My left lobe was hit, the language control. My oral language and reading and writing language were shot and I needed to retrain complex writing ideas across ideas and conversations. I needed to redevelop long paragraphs and responsibility with "live" audiences, more real than even my dissertation group -- such a difference from the vapid world of writing discourse back to the real world.

So I started corresponding to inmates in Texas Department of Criminal Justice and I won't start a conversation about justice and prison in Texas now. But I sought out some inmates, something a shallow attempt to Matthew 25.36's entreating. Writing is "safe," right? I went in as an open mind, and without judgement. For nearly a year, I've learned from men's lives -- before their sentence and their lives in the system. Reality is not TV.

I was surprised to learn so many of these men thirst for learning, education, improving their lives. The politics of education in prison is complicated, or perhaps it's absolutely not complicated, but we choose to complicate.

I've known several, several students who had been in prison or jail. I've had students in parole and meet class meetings because they need to meet their PO. Others had missed out years from technology while locked behind. So many of my students have someone -- siblings, a parent, cousins, friends -- who have been jailed in imprisoned. This is part of the community college that we don't talk about. We know about ethnicity demographics, and we have great supports for veterans, and we support women centers. We have student organizations for every group and cause. But we don't talk about felon students.

I find my former inmate students have different obstacles with some advantages. Advantages include that thirst I mentioned -- a real thirst of grasping life opportunities, and community college is one of the few options; some are very disciplined after years of routines and that can be a great improvement; several have a greater awareness of community politics, more so than most community members ever will.

But most from prison will never come to community college, and if so, I suspect that they would complete their certification or degree. The PO meeting vs class meeting attendance is a problem. All the Texas parole fees are further financial burdens while paying tuition and fees. The recidivism rate in Texas is enormous -- at least 45% of inmates will fall back into the system. That inmates have been isolated from technology for years only maintains the technology gap that we struggle with community college students.

Texas Recidivism Rates (Legislative Budget Board Staff)

And I don't have a solution. The silence -- voluntary silence from students who were in the system, or students with families affected by the system, or colleges that don't address this desperate community of inmates -- the silence is a desperate missing of our community. I know that other programs address alternative courts for distressed veterans and other citizens with mental illnesses; that some colleges reach for migrant communities; and some colleges amazingly supported survivors from Katrina in 2015. But we're not talking enough about our former inmate community. We need to start talking about it.

Resources

Legislative Budget Board Staff. "Statewide Criminal and Juvenile Justice Recidivism and Revocation Rates." Texas Legislative Budget Board. Feb 2015. PDF. 

Soltan, Liz. "Digital Divide: The Technology Gap between the Rich and Poor." Digital Responsibility. n.d. Web. <http://www.digitalresponsibility.org/digital-divide-the-technology-gap-between-rich-and-poor/>