Consider This from NPR - Pell Grants In Prison: A New Effort To Fund Degrees For People Behind Bars

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

There are 1.5 million people in state and federal prisons in the United States. Very few of them get a chance to earn a bachelor degree. That's due to a decades-old ban on the use of federal money to help people in prison pay for college classes. But that's about to change. Starting with the 2023-2024 school year, people in prison will be eligible to receive Pell grants in the amount of nearly $7,000 per year. Experts say this change will mean a chance at higher education for hundreds of thousands who are academically eligible. NPR's Elissa Nadworny reports on what the change means, and tells the story of a man who earned the type of degree that will soon be available to many more people. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

On the first day of his senior year last fall, Kenny Butler woke up at 4 a.m. Did you prepare for a bike ride? He took a bike ride through the campus of Pitzer College, past the dining hall, the pool, the lecture hall where he'd have class several hours later. Ready or not, here I come. Kenny posted a video of the spike ride on Facebook. Ready or not, even though it was his senior year, it was actually the first day Kenny had ever gone to class on campus. Because until then, he had gone to class in prison. He spent 15 years inside a medium facility prison in Norco, California.

And while he was inside, he and seven other students started their bachelor's degrees. I've just been pushing, taking six and seven classes a semester and changed my whole mind frame about life in general. Kenny put in the work, but someone had to give him the chance. He benefited from a privately funded program that helped cover the cost of his education and gave him the ability to continue it once he got out. Those programs are not widely available, but next year, for the first time in decades, the federal government will open up eligibility for Pell Grants to people in prison. That could mean hundreds of thousands of people may get the opportunity that Kenny and his classmates got. A lot of guys see me walking around, know me from my past life.

They see me with all these books all the time. I'm like a walking dictionary around here. Consider this. Getting a degree behind bars is a very rare opportunity. That's about to change. And experts say when you help people get a degree in prison, they are less likely to wind up back inside. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.

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T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. For decades, there's been a ban on people in prison using federal money to pay for college classes, and you can trace that policy back to 1994. People who commit crimes should be caught, convicted, and punished. This bill puts government on the side of those who abide by the law, not those who break it. That was then President Bill Clinton on the day he signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Before that law, it was far more common for people in prison to have access to college classes. By one count, as far back as 1982, 9% of the nation's prison population was enrolled in to college classes. By one count, as far back as 1982,

9% of the nation's prison population was enrolled in a college course. But after 1994, once federal funding went away, college prison programs all but vanished. Ruth Delaney is with the Vera Institute, a research organization focused on criminal justice reform. After that bill passed, we went from having upwards of 300 college programs that shrunk down to about 12 in the decade that followed. But back in 2015, that started to change when the Obama administration rolled out a pilot program called Second Chance Pell, which reached

about 17,000 people in its first three years. The Trump administration actually expanded that program and then successfully passed a budget through Congress that restored Pell grants more broadly with the goal of making people more employable after incarceration. Those grants will be available starting with the 2023-2024 school year. And while a degree can't erase someone's criminal record, studies show it can reduce recidivism and give people a chance at a different life. That is a chance Kenny Butler took advantage of. NPR's Alyssa Nadwarni has his story.

The story of how this 48-year-old got from prison to this bike ride through campus actually starts with another bicycle. My first time going to juvenile hall, I was maybe 11 years old. A bike. I had taken a bike. I had rode off on someone's bike. And they didn't catch me with the bike. Someone towed it on me. And then after that, once I got on the radar, it was, you know, any little thing happened. Butler grew up in public housing in the Watts neighborhood of L.A., about an hour and a world away from Pitzer's lush campus in Claremont. I grew up in a gang culture.

My family was part of the group that started the Crips, so I was raised in that environment. Being in and out of the criminal justice system through his teens meant school was never a focus. You know, one semester I just missed totally. He spent his 20s selling drugs and rising to become a leader in the Crips. A lot of what pushed me into that underworld was, you know, income, trying to generate income. It wasn't until a felony charge at age 32 for a crime he says he didn't do but took a plea deal

for landed him 15 years that he finally turned to books. I started reading just, you know, break up that time. You know, had to have something to do. But the books in the prison library were often hard to digest. So many words were unknown to Kenny. And then he found a book that opened up his world. I was in a cell with a guy, and he was saying, throw the book away. Yeah, he was saying, he's like, man, you want this? I don't want this book.

And I looked at it, man, that's a dictionary. I kept it, and I've been having it ever since. The two-inch-thick Webster's Dictionary became Kenny's companion over the next 12 years, helping him understand himself and the world. Yep, all highlighted, and yep, this is my research kit. This is Google right here. The cover fell off from overuse, so he had to fashion a new one.

You see it's all dog-eared, and there may be coffee or something down there. I don't, yeah. Here it is, Castile, and it has a map. The beloved dictionary, the frequent visits to the prison library, perhaps that's where Kenny's intellectual journey may have ended. But instead, an incredible and rare opportunity set him off on a different path.

Pitzer College became one of the few colleges in the country to offer college classes for a bachelor's degree in prison. And Kenny was one of the men chosen. Hi, guys. How are y'all? Hi, everyone. Welcome, welcome. I see smiling, happy faces, which you don't always see on Zoom calls. That's where producer Lauren Magaki and I first met Kenny Butler, in the fall of 2020, over Zoom at the California Rehabilitation Center,

a medium-security prison in Norco, California. I'm going to give you all a pop quiz now. Students on the outside on Pitzer's campus were in the classes too. It's called an inside-out program. How did the mythology frame, you know, the institution of slavery? Kenny? The glamorizing of the plantation. There are very few college programs like this in prison because for the last quarter century, there's been a ban on using federal money to pay for it. Congress recently lifted that ban, which will give hundreds of thousands of people like

Kenny the opportunity for higher education. Inside, Kenny took classes in feminism for men, African-American poetry. He learned how his own experience in prison had applications for the real world. The plan was to get a degree in organizational studies from inside prison. But last spring, a surprising thing happened. Kenny Butler got an early release. All those classes inside had shortened his sentence. On an early February morning, he shed his blue prison uniform and boarded a bus.

As it drove away, Kenny leaned against the window, watching the prison complex disappear, with its guard towers receding. So you were watching those towers? I'm looking back at the tower, all those towers around us. I said it's been most of my life, that's what I've been staring at. Like, that was like the proverbial knee on my neck being closed in these gates. And I was thinking this would be the last time I see one of these. On the bus with him, he packed his companions from those years inside, a handful of books and his beloved dictionary.

I have a stack of books. I'm going to send you guys some pictures of the beginning of my library. Because Kenny had the opportunity to enroll in the degree program inside prison, Pitzer set him up to finish his degree on the outside. Class is on the board. Political studies class post 20. American politics and black and white. The college secured tuition from an anonymous donor and housing on campus. Kenny, a tall man in his late 40s, would stroll through campus in his

signature Pitzer hoodie. Let's do lunch sometime soon, yeah? Okay. It felt good to be a student here, but Kenny also stood out and he felt it. A lot of times we walk around here, we don't get acknowledged by certain people. Sometimes other students would cross the street to avoid Kenny. And in the first couple of months, it happened in class, too. When they broke off the groups, only one person came to my table. It caught him off guard. He thought a liberal arts campus would be different. We're supposed to be a melting pot and everybody's trying to be progressive and coming together, but we're like stepchildren in the family.

No one wants to be around her. Yeah. Plus, there were other everyday challenges in the transition from living in a prison to living on the outside. It was a lot of distraction. I fell behind on my summer classes. I had to get an extension on my microeconomics, so I couldn't actually concentrate. Inside, he could just focus on class. Outside, there was the internet, social media, where Kenny posts almost constantly with the hashtag ButlerStrong. And in the background, his family and friends, and a global pandemic. I had actually like seven deaths in my family since leaving. I lost my son's mother. I lost my auntie and my uncle and my grandmother recently.

And then my little brother just got arrested the other day. It's been a roller coaster, but all I can do is take it and strive. What is school in that world? Where does school fit for you in that world? School is priority. School is priority with me. My family understands that. And school was a priority.

He got great grades. His professors looked to him as a leader. And getting that bachelor's degree, it would be a major accomplishment on its own. But Kenny was focused on what came next, a career where he'd be able to help people in prison. One issue, though? To have no actual work history at all. Being a leader in a gang, being a leader inside a prison, it's hard to put that on a resume. I can't place kitchen worker on there.

You know, so he's trying to build up the resume. To work around this predicament, Kenny focused on fellowships. Designed for recent college grads, they put more value on personal story and academic experience. He applied to several, including a research Fulbright in Uganda, studying the prison system there, and an Apier Fellowship, which awards $20,000 towards a project supporting social change. Kenny Butler won both of them. You know, I actually cried, and I had to pull over, yeah, because I was overwhelmed with joy. In addition to the fellowships, Kenny's been accepted to graduate school at Cal Poly for a master's program in public administration. You know, when it rains, of course, you know, you work hard to get to a certain point.

And when you get acknowledged in that way, now you have to work harder to make people know that they picked the right person. When he thinks about the odds of his life, to go to college, to graduate, to win a Fulbright, it's pretty overwhelming. His whole life, the odds were always stacked against him. Kenny Butler. The idea that education paved the way for his future and will for the incarcerated students who follow in his footsteps, that brings him purpose. NPR's Alyssa Nadwerny. It's Consider This from NPR.

I'm Ari Shapiro.