Providing Second Chances
America is a nation founded on the idea of second chances, yet we close doors that lead to a better life for a whole segment of the population. People with criminal convictions are stigmatized in the labor market and barred from specific jobs, unable to vote, and shut out of public housing.
But policies once rationalized as just desserts and good for public safety increasingly are viewed as counter-productive. Key arenas for creating second chances are in higher education and housing. What we’ve found: The payoff of bringing college back into prison, and using it as a sturdy bridge to support reentry. And that many people caught up in the justice system and then barred from public housing can live there safely with their families without compromising the safety of other residents—and that welcoming them is the smart thing to do.
Issue
Spotlights
Featured
Investing in Futures
Economic and Fiscal Benefits of Postsecondary Education in Prison
Efforts to build robust postsecondary education programs in prison have accelerated in recent years, with support from a broad range of groups from correctional officers to college administrators. This report, which is the result of a collaborative effort with the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, describes how lifting the current ban on ...
Opening Doors to Public Housing
Expanding Access for People with Conviction Histories
Access to safe, affordable housing is essential to the success of people in reentry and their families. For people leaving prison or jail or those with conviction histories who want to reunify with their family members in public housing or apply for housing themselves, admissions criteria can be a serious barrier. Federal guidelines leave many poli ...
Project
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Margaret diZerega
College in Prison
Postsecondary education opportunities for incarcerated people
Research suggests that education is key to improving many long-term outcomes for incarcerated people, their families, and their communities—including reducing recidivism and increasing employability and earnings after release. To improve the lives of incarcerated people and decrease the collateral consequences of incarceration, Vera works nationwid ...
Project
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Margaret diZerega
Related Work
Series: Unlocking Potential
Transformed by Access to College in Prison
Twenty-eight years ago, I was sentenced to life without parole and began serving time in California. Around that same time, after the 1994 Crime Bill was enacted—ending Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students—I saw cuts to all kinds of programs, including educational ones. Going to school and getting a college degree seemed out of the ques ...
Beyond the Statistics and into the Hearts of Incarcerated Students
In 2010, I was blessed with the opportunity to enroll in my first college courses from the confines of a maximum-security prison. Just seven months before meeting my professor for our first class, I had been sentenced to serve 17 years for the harm I had caused to another man and to both of our communities. When I began my college experience, the P ...
Election 2020
Justice Is on the Ballot
Series: Target 2020
Postsecondary Education in Prison is a Racial Equity Strategy
Consider who is most impacted by mass incarceration: Black people make up 13 percent of the country’s population, but more than one-third of people in prison. Latinx people constitute 18.5 percent of the country’s population, but account for 23.4 percent of people in prison. Currently, one in three Black men without a high school diploma or GED wil ...
Blog Post
Margaret diZerega
George Chochos
Flyers for Public Housing Authorities on Reentry Housing
Public housing authorities are changing their policies to increase access for people with conviction histories—making communities, housing developments, and families safer. The Oklahoma City Housing Authority and the Lafayette Housing Authority recently reexamined their admissions policies to improve access. Both housing authorities are partners in ...
Series: Target 2020
The Party Platforms Must Address the Urgent Need to Transform American Criminal Justice
America’s justice system is rooted in the nation’s history of slavery and racial oppression and applying a human dignity lens is necessary to achieve transformational change. This perspective values the intrinsic worth of human life and a person’s ability to grow and change. In that spirit, the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) urges important party ...
Blog Post
Hayne Yoon
Logan Schmidt
From Corrections to College in California
An Evaluation of Student Support During and After Incarceration
California is a national leader in providing higher education to justice-involved people. A key driver of this movement has been the Renewing Communities initiative, a joint project of the Opportunity Institute and the Stanford Criminal Justice Center that sought to expand access to higher education among justice-involved people in California, both ...
New Data: Second Chance Pell Continues to Open Doors for More Students
This means that students participating in Second Chance Pell programs are learning the skills necessary to play all types of roles in their communities when they return home. For example, Milwaukee Area Technical College is offering career-specific training in areas like welding. Glenville State College in West Virginia offers an array of programs, ...
Blog Post
Margaret diZerega
Ruth Delaney
Second Chance Pell
A Snapshot of the First Three Years
The Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, launched by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015, provides need-based Pell Grants to people in state and federal prisons. Second Chance Pell has active partnerships with 64 colleges that teach in 28 states. The schools were selected in June 2016 for the initiative, which examines whether exp ...
Lessons from Second Chance Pell
A Toolkit for Helping Incarcerated Students Complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid
In 2015, the U.S. Department of Education announced the Second Chance Pell (SCP) experiment under the Experimental Sites Initiative, which allows incarcerated students who would be eligible for Pell Grants—a form of federal financial aid—if they were not incarcerated to access them while attending an eligible academic program offered by one of the ...
Voters in Battleground States Favor Restoring Pell Grants for People in Prison
These battleground state voters seem to understand that reinstating Pell eligibility for the greatest number of people in prison is a sound investment in our future. Plenty of other influential voices agree. Bipartisan momentum to get rid of the Pell ban for people in prison has been growing steadily: Since early 2019, the Association of State Co ...
Blog Post
Margaret diZerega
Growing Momentum to Expand Access to Quality Postsecondary Education for People in Prison
Postsecondary education in prison cuts costs, which provides opportunities to reinvest in communities. “Safer communities” is another way of saying less crime and less taxpayer dollars spent on prisons. According to the findings of Vera’s 2015 “Price of Prisons” report, states spend upward of $45 billion a year incarcerating people, but continue to ...
Blog Post
Fred Patrick