Dive Brief:
- In conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the federal Education Department announced $5.7 million in new grants aimed to help students who have been involved with the criminal justice system.
- A new toolkit was also released to provide guidance to educators and school leaders in support of a successful reentry system for formerly incarcerated youth and adults.
- Both initiatives are part of National Reentry Week, which highlights helping formerly incarcerated young people and adults successfully return to their communities.
Dive Insight:
According to the Department of Education, a 2013 federal study of people released from state prisons found 94% of incarcerated adults nearing reentry identified education as a key need. "Equipping incarcerated youth and adults with the skills they need to successfully reenter the community is one of the most powerful – and cost-effective – ways to ensure they avoid future contact with the justice system and become productive members of society," the Department noted in a press release. President Obama restored Pell Grant eligibility for certain inmates in summer 2015.
Re-entering citizens, often those affected by the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon, which feeds youth into the nation's juvenile justice system, have been a focus of the Obama administration's education priorities. In addition to investments around Pell and degree programs for inmates, the president has sought to reverse the trend of levying serious punishments for small crimes and for zero-tolerance discipline policies, leading to disproportionate impacts on students who commit small or negligible infractions.
Other solutions include those like the one taken by the state of Pennsylvania. There, a partnership called the Future Forward Initiative between the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office and Philadelphia Community College offers to expunge felony convictions for those who choose one year of college over prison time. To enter and finish the program with an expunged record, students must be at least 24 years old. They also need a high school diploma or equivalent, acceptance to the community college, and must complete 27 college credits in one year and remain arrest-free.