Event Title: Unlocking the Promise of Pell for Incarcerated Learners
Event Type: Online Discussion in the LINCS Community
Event Location: The Correctional Education and Financial Literacy groups
Date(s): October 12 - 16, 2015
The U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) announcement of a pilot program that will allow Pell Grant eligibility for some incarcerated students signaled a change in the way education is viewed in correctional facilities across the nation. Education is a proven strategy to break the cycle of crime and incarceration that too often prevails in impoverished families and communities. The program also creates the potential for a change in public policy that can shape both the fiscal return on efforts to reduce recidivism and the reclamation of human potential through the successful re-entry of offenders into society.
Join us for a thoughtful discussion on the re-implementation of Pell Grants at experimental sites in state prisons. We will look briefly at the history of Pell in corrections postsecondary programs, at the 1994 Crime Bill that led to its demise, and then review and discuss the new ED initiative.