Education

While women prisoners face issues not pertinent to male prisoners, they also
share issues. However, these similarities are often neglected. One issue
commonly overlooked when defining the issues of women prisoners is education.
Studies of the impact of education have traditionally focused on male inmates.
While education is not a particularly masculine concern, the omission of women
in these studies indicates that researchers do not perceive this as an
important issue for women.

However, such is not the case. In the 1970s, inmates participating in the
Santa Cruz Women's Prison Project, the first program to ever offer university
courses in a women's prison, demonstrated their eagerness for higher education.
In 1972, when Karlene Faith, one of its teachers and coordinators, was
temporarily banned from the prison, inmates organized a work strike and a
sit-in before the warden's office. Similarly, when the project was barred in
1973, the students circulated petitions, held work strikes and met with the
administration to protest the project's removal.1

In 1981, the administration at Bedford Hills finally agreed to observe
Powell v. Ward and set up a $125,000 "settlement fund" to be spent by the
prisoners for improvements at the prison.2 Inmates spent all of this fund on
educational tools: expansion of the library collection, books on
African-American history, the hiring of an educational consultant, computers
for business classes, and Spanish vocational classes.3 That the inmates chose
to spend exclusively on books and other educational materials shows that women,
like men, are often eager to learn.

More than a decade later, when the cuts in federal and state funding ended
prison college programs, the inmates at Bedford Hills worked with the prison
administration and representatives from various colleges and universities
throughout New York State to restore higher education programs. In 1996, they
succeeded in implementing College Bound, an undergraduate college program aimed
toward a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. Nearly thirty-three percent of
Bedford's inmates pay the equivalent of one month's wages to participate in
either the college or pre-college program.4 This fact alone should disprove
the unspoken notion that education is not an issue for incarcerated women.

Professor Michelle Fine, with the aid of eight Bedford inmates, conducted
interviews with College Bound participants, their children and correctional
staff. While her study focused mainly on the effect of education on
recidivism, she also observed that graduates have gone on to develop,
facilitate and evaluate prison programs addressing issues such as anger
management, substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, sexual abuse,
parenting support and prenatal care.5 They have also gone on to help their
fellow inmates with their education. Martina Leonard, the executive assistant
to the president of Marymount Manhattan College, one of the colleges offering
courses to the College Bound program, recounted that former students
transferred to another New York State prison became "leadersTheyre tutors and
mentors to other students and they feel that just having that college program
at Bedford Hills has really allowed them to begin tohelp other people."6
Thus, the impact of higher education transforms womens self-perception from
passive objects and victims into active agents of both self-and social change.

Ironically, Fine observes that for many women, "prison has become a place for
intellectual, emotional and social growthA space free of male-violence, drugs
and overwhelming responsibilities, college-in-prison carves out a space which
nurtures a kind of growth and maturity that would perhaps not have been
realized on the outside."5 While Fine does not delve deeply into this issue,
it does suggest that women often are unable to focus on learning with the
myriad of responsibilities and distractions of the outside world. Most of the
women who attended the College Bound program from 1997 to 2000 came with past
histories of academic failure : Upon entering Bedford Hills, forty-three
percent had neither a high school diploma or GED ; twenty-one percent had a GED
and twenty-two percent a high school diploma ; and only fourteen percent had
some college credit.7

Other women have found ways to circumvent the 1994 Violent Crime Control and
Law Enforcement Act's prohibition of federal financing of prisoners' education.
Dawn Amos, for example, applied for and was awarded scholarships for college
courses despite her status as a prisoner.8

At the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, Ohio, a woman who had
participated in the facilitys Tapestry Therapeutic Community, a residential
drug and alcohol treatment program within the prison, recognized the need for
education. "Many of the women here have not had a chance to get their
education ; due to their drug addiction," she wrote. "In fact, some of us can
barley [sic] read." She proposed the idea of a book club "to instill the
importance of Education, and the joy of reading, and sharing with others" to
the Tapestry staff and, once her idea was approved, solicited book donations
from various books-to-prisoners programs.9 The books she requested from Books
Through Bars in New York City were surprising choices : feminist studies,
radical political analyses of the Israel/Palestine conflict, a political
biography and The Canterbury Tales.10 Thus, women find ways to further their
education despite the lack of governmental and institutional funding.

CONTINUE

NOTES:

Education

1 For a detailed account of the Santa Cruz Women's Prison Project, see Faith's
Unruly Women.

2 Powell v. Ward affirmed an inmate's right to due process during disciplinary
hearings.

3 Diaz-Cotto, 351-2.

4 Fine, Michelle. Torre, Maria Elena. "The Impact of College Education on
Inmates in the New York State Region." Testimony to the New York State
Democratic Task Force on Criminal Justice Reform. Public Hearings. State Office
Building. Brooklyn, New York: 4 December 2000. 2.

5 Fine, Michelle et al. "Changing Minds : The Impact of College in a Maximum
Security Prison." Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
September 2001. http://www.changingminds.ws/04_results/07.html

6 Ibid. 20.

7 Fine, Michelle et al. "Changing Minds."
http://www.changingminds.ws/02_executivesummary/04 .html

8 Letter from Dawn Amos. Dated 7 April 2001.

9 Letter from Ohio Reformatory for Women to Books Through BarsNew York City.
Undated. Although there are various programs which send free books to
prisoners throughout the United States and Canada, only one exists specifically
for women. The other programs receive requests mostly from men, lending to the
belief that women prisoners neither organize nor network.

10 Letter from Ohio Reformatory for Women to Books Through BarsNew York City.
Dated 17 January 2002.

CONTINUE