Higher Education in Prisons Program
The Higher Education in Prisons Program [AYC-HEP] delivers college-level courses to incarcerated men in Georgia prisons. What began as a ‘prison education initiative’ in 2020 has slowly but steadily become a full-fledged ‘higher education in prisons program’ within the Andrew Young Center. More than twenty faculty from Morehouse have taught classes inside state and federal prisons in Georgia over the past several years. HEP-affiliated faculty and ‘student ambassadors’ are also charged with advocating for expanding higher education in prisons as well as raising awareness on issues of criminal justice and mass incarceration on campus and in our broader community. Morehouse College is committed to extending the benefits of higher education to incarcerated as well as formerly incarcerated men and women in Georgia. Primary community partners include Common Good Atlanta and Georgia Coalition of Higher Education in Prisons as well as the Bard Prison Initiative.
Morehouse recently received a congressional appropriation, which was sponsored by Congresswoman Nikema Williams, to expand the reach of the AYC-HEP Program. With this project funding, the AYC-HEP Program will grow to (1) serve more than 200 incarcerated students annually, (2) expand the number of academic courses and enrichment seminars offered each semester, (3) enhance the AYC-HEP Student Ambassador Program, (4) gain Department of Education approval as a designated Pell site, and (5) establish a pathway to a Morehouse degree for incarcerated as well as formerly incarcerated scholars. For more information about this congressional appropriation, see here.
For more information about the AYCGL Higher Education in Prisons Program, contact kipton.jensen@morehouse.edu.
AYC-HEP Faculty Teaching Affiliates
Over the past several years, more than twenty members of the faculty at Morehouse College have taught in prisons as AYC-HEP Faculty Teaching Affiliates. In past three years, HEP-affiliated faculty have offered humanities courses and enrichment seminars as well as hosting book clubs and providing reentry services at Metro Reentry in Dekalb County, Burruss Correctional in Forsyth County, the Downtown Reentry Program in Fulton County, and the US Federal Corrections Institution in Atlanta. Historical Black Colleges and Universities are increasingly engaged in higher education in prisons (see here).
In a recent promotional video, Dr. Stephane Dunn claimed that teaching at Metro Reentry "was one of the most extraordinary experiences I have had as a professor in my life. The thing that was so remarkable to me at the end of the day was how much it affected me. You go in thinking about how you're going to make an impact. You want to make an impact but are nervous you won't. And then you come out, and you realize you're the one who probably got the greatest gift."
AYC-HEP Student Ambassadors
In 2022, the AYCGL announced its first cohort of Higher Education in Prison (HEP) Student Ambassadors. This program is designed to complement the Andrew Young Center’s prison education programming. HEP Student Ambassadors provide support to Faculty Teaching Affiliates, but they also work on campus at Morehouse to raise awareness on issues of criminal justice reform, the value of prison education, and the impact of mass incarceration on our communities.
Mr. Calvin Bell (’24) and Dr. Jensen, the Director of the AYC-HEP Program, discuss the origins of AYC-HEP student ambassadors in a recent ON FOCUS video (see here). A recent More Conversations podcast features a conversation between Mr. Rodney Walker, an HEP-affiliated faculty member, and Mr. Omari Whiting, AYC-HEP Student Ambassador (see here). Additional videos featuring AYC-HEP student ambassadors are available here and here.
Vital Statistics:
Georgia has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world: 968 per 100,000 citizens. Nationally, the USA has incarceration rates of 664 per 100,000 citizens. The racial and ethnic makeup of the incarcerated population is disproportionate to the extreme: Black citizens are twice as likely as Latinos and thrice as likely as whites to end up behind bars in Georgia prisons. For a profile of incarceration rates in Georgia, see here. The benefits of higher education in prison are compelling. As a case in point, access to higher education drastically reduces recidivism rates: National rates of recidivism in the US are 76.6%; for those who receive college-level education, the rate drops significantly to 13.7%. For those students who complete the cycle of humanities courses associated with Common Good Atlanta, which began in 2008, recidivism rates are below 1%. Prison education is intrinsically valuable because it honors the human dignity of the incarcerated person and because it provides a restorative path to psychosocial transformation.
Recent faculty blog entries describing the AYCGL Prison Education Program can be found here.
For more information about the AYCGL Higher Education in Prisons Program, contact kipton.jensen@morehouse.edu.