Graduation caps fly into the air as 20 incarcerated students make history at the country’s first top 10 university to award bachelor degrees to incarcerated students. Lamorinda native, Dr. Laura Beth Nielsen will be speaking about Northwestern’s Prison Education Program at the First Friday Forum speaker series on Friday, May 3.
The First Friday Forum speaker series, sponsored by the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church (LOPC), continues with a presentation from Dr. Laura Beth Nielsen, professor of sociology and director of the Center for Legal Studies at Northwestern University.
Her May 3 lecture, “Northwestern University’s Prison Education Program,” will describe the path to a university education for men and women currently serving time in prison.
For many decades, all across the country, elite universities have endeavored to provide incarcerated people with access to the kind of high-quality education that would empower them and, consequently, reduce recidivism.
Under this standard model, students in jails and prisons have been able to earn course credits that can be applied to degrees from partner institutions. The downside, however, has generally been that most of the country’s top schools stop short of directly conferring their own degrees on these students.
But that all changed last November, when 20 students – all “lifers” – made history by becoming the first cohort of incarcerated students to graduate with a solid bachelor’s degree. The launch of this program, conferred through Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies, represents a milestone for prison education programs at elite institutions, and a significant step toward greater equity in higher education.
The Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP) is the only bachelor’s degree program in the United States offered to incarcerated students by a top 10 university. As the architects of the program see it, by expanding access to college-level courses toward what they consider the “systematically disadvantaged population,” their updated program will open doors to a wider world and a “transformation through education.”
“Universities have a moral obligation to make this a more just society,” said Dr. Jennifer Lackey, the university’s Wayne & Elizabeth Jones professor of philosophy, and founder of the Northwestern Prison Education Program. “And none is better placed to do this than a world-class institution like Northwestern.”
According to the university, anyone equipped with the necessary tools to succeed through prison education programs has an increased ability to break the cycle of poverty and incarceration and lead a fuller life.
Data shows that while the overall recidivism rate for incarcerated people is about 67%, it drops to 14% for those who earn associate degrees, and even further for higher degrees – to 5.6% for those who earn bachelor’s degrees and zero percent for those who earn master’s degrees.
Nielsen agrees with Lackey’s assertion that education has a unique power to transform people’s lives for the better and said, “Nobody should be forever reduced to the worst moment of their life. My students are amazing people living in squalid conditions and they still do all their homework.”
This month’s First Friday Forum takes place at 1:30 p.m. on May 3 in the sanctuary of the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church at 49 Knox Drive, Lafayette. Contact lopc.org/first-friday-forum/ to sign up for in-person attendance, to register to stream Zoom or to enjoy previous presentations.
