[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 126 (Monday, September 12, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: September 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
CONGRESS IS STEALING OUR COLLEGE EDUCATION
Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, when we were considering eliminating
the Pell grants for prison inmates, I was one of those who opposed that
policy. It makes sense if prison inmates are never going to get out of
prison, but it doesn't make sense when the huge majority of those in
our prisons will come out.
We are doing far too little in the way of constructive effort for
those in prison. This has been one of the few constructive things.
The New York Times carried an op-ed piece by Jon Marc Taylor, who is
a prison inmate in Missouri--I gather in a Federal prison.
Our response to the whole problem of crime has been shortsighted, and
there is no better illustration than our taking Pell grants away from
those in our prisons who want to pursue further education.
I ask to insert into the Record the op-ed piece by Jon Marc Taylor.
The article follows:
[From the New York Times, Aug. 24, 1994]
There Ought to Be a Law (But Not This Crime Bill)
Congress Is Stealing Our College Education
(By Jon Marc Taylor*)
Jefferson City, Mo.--On April 19, I ``celebrated'' my
anniversary. On that day I had been locked up for 14 years. I
had survived and even grown stronger in the crucible of the
keep (as good as any reason to celebrate), but after watching
NBC's ``Dateline'' that evening, I feared I had outlived the
best chance any ex-con has of making it once he hits the
bricks again.
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*Jon Marc Taylor, a prison inmate in Missouri, won a Robert
F. Kennedy journalism award last year.
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The lead segment on ``Dateline'' that night was on
prisoners receiving Pell higher education grants to help
finance undergraduate college education. A measure denying
Pell grants to inmates was up for a vote in the House the
next day; the Senate had already passed such a measure.
And now Congress is about to turn the exclusion,
incorporated into the crime bill, into the nation's policy on
higher education for prisoners.
Since 1982, when I enrolled in a state university's prison
extension program, I have managed to complete associate and
bachelor's degrees with the help of Pell grants, and then,
with the assistance of family, friends and church groups,
became the first prisoner in my state to earn a graduate
degree. I began a doctoral program in education and completed
a few courses before my transfer to another state temporarily
stalled that guest. By then, higher education had so enriched
my soul that with my own resources I started a second
baccalaureate program in criminal justice and psychology.
Over the years, I have witnessed countless changes in my
fellow convicts and brother classmates. White and black
offenders not only got along but actually and began to
respect one another. My fraternity brothers spoke about
careers, going straight and, even more remarkable, about
being proud of that life style. When prisoner-students got
out, a truly remarkable thing happened. They did not come
back.
In May, a friend of mine and a two-time loser, who during
his second bit enrolled in the prison college program, worked
full time and started a family after his release. He is now
receiving his bachelor's degree, with honors, in writing.
Another acquaintance, who is being released after 15 years,
is already enrolled in graduate school. My ex-cellmate, who
completed part of his degree in prison, is a manager at a
burger chain and attends a nationally ranked university. All
three men depended on Pell grants.
Now, it appears that one of the few shining stars I have
seen in the dismal galaxy of corrections is fading out.
Its end is due in part to misinformation like the
``Dateline'' piece, which implied that a miscarriage of
justice was transpiring at the expense of Joe (and Jane)
College.
The show told us that some 27,000 inmate-students receive
Pell grants worth $35 million annually. What was not reported
was that $6.3 billion in grants went to 4.3 million students
the same year. The report didn't mention that prisoners
receive about one-half of 1 percent of all Pell grants.
Then it said that half of those who apply for assistance
are denied Pell grants and that inmates unfairly skew the
need-based formula to their benefit. We were not told that
those denied aid generally come from families with incomes
about the $42,000 ceiling set by Congress.
With prisoners expelled from the Pell program, little will
change. All students who qualify for grants in a given year
receive them. The $35 million ``saved'' will be distributed
to the other recipients; evenly divided, it would amount to
less than $5 per semester for each one.
Only vaguely did ``Dateline'' suggest that prison college
programs reduce the likelihood of the participants' return to
prison. This seems a strange oversight when the purpose of
prisons, aside from deterrence, is to rehabilitate. The
debate over the efficacy of rehabilitation has been
vitriolic, but there remains little doubt that the better
educated the ex-convict, the smaller the chance of
recidivism.
That has been documented since the 1970's. In December, the
Federal Bureau of Prisons reported a 40 percent recidivism
rate for all Federal parolees while among college graduates
the rate was 5 percent.
Since it costs $25,000 a year to incarcerate someone, with
$11.5 billion invested in concrete and barbed wire in 1990
alone, any program that routinely cuts inmates' return rates
in half should be expanded, not eliminated.
The average cost of a skill-related associate's degree
earned in prison is $3,000. This is a little over 10 percent
of the cost of a single year of incarceration. Yet states are
spending more for penitentiaries than universities.
Congress is doing more than shuttering prison college
classrooms. To a large extent it is closing the door to hope
for a future after release. But hope is the critical
ingredient, I have learned. It forms the bulwark against the
insanity of dehabilitating incarceration and the corrosive
anger of monotonous, petty regimentation.
Some people argue that inmates have lost the ``right'' to a
college education at public expense. What they fail to
consider is that the issue is not rights, but reclaiming
humanity. And researchers are finding that it is in the
cognitive powers that positive restructuring (rehabilitation,
if you will) must take place. We can pay for the opportunity
now, or we can pay much more later.
The move by Congress is not surprising. Politicians have
been playing to the cheap seats with their ineffectual litany
of ``get tough on crime.'' The crime bill will spend more
public money on cell blocks--and more poorly educated,
untrained offenders will be released back into society. And
nothing will change the economic and social conditions that
feed the frustrations, ignorance and futile coping attempts
that we call crime in America.
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