APDS in the News

In his inaugural address, President Joe Biden pledged to combat the sting of systemic racism, boldly promising that the “dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.” He took his first steps toward making good on that promise by signing a slew of executive orders focused on equity — including directing the U.S. Department of Justice to improve prison conditions.

But Biden brings to this mission a checkered history with race and criminal justice. As a senator, he sponsored the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, helping to further fuel an era of mass incarceration that disproportionately impacted the lives of black families across the country. I understand, first-hand, just how cruel that system can be. Two years after the 1994 Crime Bill was signed, I was sentenced to prison for life, with little hope for parole. I was 17.

Biden did not likely set out to imprison a generation of people like me. Indeed, he admitted last year he hasn’t “always gotten things right.” As president, Biden must work to atone for his role in Washington’s legacy of mass incarceration, foregrounding policies that will not only reduce our prison population but also set individuals already incarcerated up for success. Education is an essential part of this goal.

I would know. Education saved my life. Growing up, I was a smart kid who loved to read, but I was never a good student. I was too distracted by the crews beefing with one another outside my window, too anxious about the sounds of gunshots and squealing tires. By the time I was arrested, I had long stopped caring about school. In prison, however, education served as my guiding light. Over the next 16 years, I earned my high school diploma, graduated from vocational shops, and earned my associate’s degree. A judge agreed to my early release and I returned to society a changed person –– and with a blueprint for a successful life after prison. Too few are given the same opportunity.

Just over one-third of state prisons provide college-level courses, serving just six percent of incarcerated individuals in the United States, despite research overwhelmingly demonstrating the positive impact education can have on recidivism. Inmates who participate in educational programs are 43 percent less likely to return to prison. They have lower rates of unemployment and higher personal incomes. Prisons with college programs experience less violence.

Last month, Congress lifted its decades-long ban on providing federal student aid to inmates, rolling back a key component of the 1994 Crime Bill. But another, major roadblock remains: More than 40 percent of incarcerated individuals have not yet earned a high school diploma.

High school graduates earn, on average, more than $8,000 more each year than those who don’t complete high school. Many go on to college and dramatically increase their earnings. Any serious effort aimed at prison reform must focus on helping incarcerated individuals clear that first educational hurdle. The Biden administration should require all inmates to work toward earning a high school diploma or equivalency, no matter the sentence.

The administration should also create a national standard for allowing inmates to earn good time credit through education. In states like Indiana, prisoners already receive time off their sentences for completing approved education programs. For completing a basic literacy program, GED program, or technical education program, for example, inmates are awarded six months off their sentences. The federal government should look toward these kinds of state programs to craft clarifying guidance at the national level.

While providing prison education at such a scale may have been an immense challenge in the past, advances in technology leave little room for excuses today. Current conditions at most prisons are akin to a one-room schoolhouse, a setup that has only grown more challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic. We can do better. Low-cost tablets, computers, and other tools can help prisons create hybrid learning experiences that marry the best of in-person teaching with the greater affordability and accessibility technology provides.

Unfortunately, too many prisons still rely on outdated and overpriced technology that only hinders educational attainment, including predatory tablet contracts that exploit inmates and their innocent friends and family. The Biden administration has a moral, economic, and social imperative to ensure prisons have the resources and guidance they need to remove these barriers.

We have come a long way from the environment that produced the 1994 Crime Bill. And so too have the kinds of tools necessary to ensure wide and meaningful access to high-quality prison education. If President Biden is to ever make amends with the communities he helped injure — if he is to ensure the promise of justice for all is no longer deferred — he must prioritize educational opportunities for incarcerated individuals.

Chris Wilson is a formerly incarcerated individual who has received national recognition for his book. He attributes his post-release success to an exceptional prison education and his development of what he calls “the master plan.”

This year gives about 463,000 of the more than 2 million Americans behind bars — and President-elect Joe Biden — a chance at a fresh start.

Buried deep in Congress’ latest COVID-19 relief deal is a provision that would allow the incarcerated the chance to better themselves, and their communities, through higher education.

For almost 30 years, prisoners could use federal aid to pay for a college education. By 1993-94, 23,000 of the 4 million Pell Grant recipients who received a portion of the $6 billion program to pay for higher education were in prison. By that time an estimated 772 in-prison programs were operational inside1,287 correctional facilities in the United States.

But the infamous 1994 Crime Bill, which Biden proudly authored, banned such aid for prisoners’ education. Biden was not alone; the majority of the Congressional Black Caucus voted in favor of doubling down on mass incarceration and mandatory minimum sentences through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

In the years that followed, hundreds of in-prison college programs folded, which locked out one segment of the lower-income population from educational opportunities that could, among other things, prepare them for successful reentry into society.

Now, during our era of criminal justice reform, a $1.4 trillion omnibus bill supported by key congressional leaders including Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., included a proposal to abolish the ban on incarcerated people qualifying for a Pell Grant.

Now that President Donald Trump has signed the bill into law, this package will give new life to the growing support for providing higher education to people behind bars.

Since 2016, the U.S Department of Education has approved 130 colleges and universities in 42 states and the District of Columbia to offer postsecondary degrees and certificates to incarcerated people through the Second-Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative.

According to a snapshot of the first three years of the program provided by the Vera Institute for Justice, at least 17,000 people have enrolled in Second Chance Pell colleges, and students have earned more than 4,500 certificates, postsecondary diplomas, associate’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees.

Education helps reduce recidivism

Research has shown the economic and fiscal benefits of postsecondary programs in prison, and a RAND Corporation study found that incarcerated people who participate in correctional education have a 43% lower likelihood of returning to prison and 13% higher odds of post-release employment than those who do not.

As we move into a new year, what can we generally expect in 2021 if things work out as planned?

Postsecondary institutions will gain access to a new set of Pell eligible students, and the timing could not be better. Given the decline in on-campus student enrollment and the rise of online learning platforms — both due in part to COVID-19 — lifting the ban will benefit both revenue-starved colleges and the education-eager incarcerated.

And, contrary to myths about giving a Pell Grant to prisoners, free-world college students will not lose out on any federal aid to someone in prison.

Companies like the American Prison Data Systems are poised to use online technology platforms to offer education to incarcerated students and prison personnel alike. Alumni and students of in-prison college programs — be it the Bard Prison Initiative, Historically Black Colleges and Universities offering degrees in prison, or the five community colleges in the Second Chance Pell Program in Virginia  — will obtain an opportunity to champion the benefits of this program.

For President-elect Biden this legislative package gives him a second chance, too. He acknowledged during his run for the White House that the 1994 crime law he sponsored was heavy on punishment and light on redemption — locking prisoners out of Pell Grants once inside prison walls.

In 2020, Biden included in his “Plan for Education Beyond High School” a pledge to “restore formally incarcerated individuals’ eligibility for Pell.” So this legislative package gets him one step closer to fulfilling that goal.

To further expand eligibility, Congress will need to amend federal law that still bans most prisoners from receiving Pell Grants. Biden also can (and should) extend the Second Chance Pell Program experiment, initiated by President Barack Obama and extended by Trump.

Biden’s nominee for education secretary, Miguel Cardona, will be responsible for oversight of the Second Chance program, which has received support from Secretaries Arne Duncan, John King and Betsy DeVos, as well as advocates on the right and left, in faith and business communities and in some states.

Proposal has bipartisan support

At a point in American history when partisanship and distrust of each other’s motives have clouded our views about Congress, this bold bipartisan decision to lift the Pell Grant eligibility ban is a crucial step forward in rebuilding political trust and preparing the 95% of people who will leave prison one day to reenter society.

For us all, including prisoners, the New Year is a time of reflection and redemption. Now it is up to us to see that the incarcerated can make good on their resolutions when they return to society.

Gerard Robinson is a Fellow of Practice at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, and co-editor of “Education for Liberation: The Politics of Promise and Reform Inside and Beyond America’s Prisons”. He also was the Virginia Secretary of Education.

 

Today, 2.3 million people sit in prisons or jails. Research suggests that those who participate in well-rounded education programs are 43% less likely to commit another crime after release than those who do not. But—while people in prison have widely varying learning needs—many inmates are unable to access any education at all, and what programming does exist looks like a one-room schoolhouse. We cannot unleash the potential of incarcerated learners without scaling learning tools that are accessible, rigorous, and personalized.

Join us for a conversation with Chris Wilson—the author of The Master Plan, a book about his experience being sentenced to life-in-prison at age 17 and finding his way out through education—and Harris Ferrell, the CEO of APDS, an ed-tech provider in corrections. Together we’ll explore how accessible, ethical technological innovations can bring every prisoner the educational resources necessary to live a productive life on the outside.

At 17 years old, Chris Wilson was sentenced to life in prison. Now 41, he recalls that moment and says, “It was like receiving a death sentence.” But after 16.5 years in prison, he turned his life around. And in the eight years since his release, he has become an author, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and advocate for incarcerated individuals in America. For Second Chance month, which was created to draw attention to challenges faced by formerly incarcerated individuals, I had the pleasure of speaking to Wilson about the impact that the Second Chance Pell pilot program had and the impact that lifting the ban could have.

Wilson points out that society often labels incarcerated individuals as “monsters” who are beyond redemption. But all too often, important questions aren’t being asked. “This monster that you described, how many times has society failed this person before the crime was committed? How many foster homes has this person bounced around? How many times was this person abused? How many times have we failed to provide services to help this person? We don’t talk about that, but we’re quick to label this person a monster,” he says.

According to Prison Policy Initiative, incarcerated individuals are more likely to come from low-income backgrounds. Wilson shared his own experience as a young Black child growing up in a low-income community in Washington D.C. and the trauma that accompanied it. “My neighbor was murdered and I had to go to school the next day. There were no school counselors at my school to talk to. I couldn’t do my schoolwork that week. And things like this happen every day in Black and Brown communities.” At this time,  P-12 policy doesn’t provide adequate social-emotional support to students who need it. Instead, those students are over-policed in schools and eventually pushed out — resulting in the school-to-prison pipeline.

So, from an early age, society repeatedly fails communities of color, and the culmination is an overrepresentation of people of color in prison. “The system is designed to punish and oppress,” Wilson says. And once these individuals are released, there are few opportunities available to them. They “check the box,” indicating that they have served time, and experience the “collateral consequences of incarceration.” Oftentimes, difficulties of finding work after release increase recidivism. However, studies show that a college degree or even some college greatly reduces people’s likelihood of returning to prison.

After realizing that he would live out his life incarcerated, Wilson spent three days in his cell, writing goals of who he wanted to become, and the steps he needed to take to be released from prison. He decided that the first step toward achieving those goals was to educate himself. “That was the genesis of The Master Plan,” he said. He got his GED, became a Rattcliffe Scholar at University of Baltimore, got his bachelor’s degree in sociology and taught himself to read, write, and speak three different languages (Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin). Over a 10-year period, his petitions for release were denied five times. The sixth time, he told the judge what he had accomplished, and the plan that he had crafted for his life after release. She told him, “I’m going to give you a shot. But you’ve got to finish the plan.”

Because of the 1994 Crime Bill, incarcerated individuals have been banned from receiving Pell Grants to pursue postsecondary education. As a result, the number of in-prison education programs available has dropped significantly — from about 350 in the early 1990s to about 12 now. However, thanks to continued bipartisan support, 67 sites have just been identified to participate in a new Second Chance Pell program, bringing the total up to 130. Now, people like Wilson will be able to benefit from taking classes and earning their degrees. He speaks about how fortunate he and his classmates were to have that opportunity, and how, as a result, they got their degrees and are “doing well out in society.” He adds, “About half of us went back to get additional degrees. And that’s just a good return on taxpayer dollars.”

Since being released, Wilson has started multiple businesses and is currently partnering with American Prison Data Systems to provide incarcerated individuals with tablets, free of charge. With tablets, people can contact their family members, use educational apps, or even learn to code. He is also working on a curriculum for The Master Plan, so that incarcerated people can use his book as a blueprint to build their own plan and reach their goals. “And now I tell people, you can set goals for yourself. You can educate and discipline yourself, and you can achieve those goals. I am a walking example of it.”

Right now, there are 2.3 million incarcerated people in the United States. Based on a study sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, people who are able to participate in educational opportunities while incarcerated are significantly less likely to return to prison. Reinstating Pell Grants for individuals who are incarcerated will offer a chance to pursue higher education, preparing them for return to life outside of prison, and providing opportunities for higher paying positions, and reducing the probability of recidivism. The new sites identified to participate in the Second Chance Pell program are a constructive start toward building the change necessary to rehabilitate individuals returning to society after incarceration. Lifting the ban on Pell Grants provides incarcerated individuals with a college education and possibilities for a better future. Every person deserves that chance.

While the coronavirus pandemic has upended the lives of millions of educators, students, and families, it has laid bare – for many, the unique set of challenges for incarcerated learners who are already accustomed to navigating isolation with limited resources.

The last few weeks have seen an unending stream of heartbreaking stories from correctional institutions which remind us just how vulnerable our prison system is to an unexpected crisis. Which got me wondering how incarcerated students have been affected by such massive upheaval, amid the imminent safety crisis unfolding in jails and prisons.

I learned that for the 2.3 million Americans who are incarcerated everyday, education can be a rare connection to purpose. Research has shown that correctional education makes prisons safer for both inmates and staff, reduces the odds that students will re-offend after they’re released, and increases the likelihood of post-release employment.

That data has drawn the interest of an unlikely group of allies, from President Donald Trump and country’s largest association of prosecutors to Senator Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders. There is now growing, bipartisan support to amend the federal higher education law to ensure incarcerated people are eligible for federal Pell grants.

But, after decades of policies that ballooned the U.S. prison population and cut spending for incarcerated students, incarcerated learners still, for the most part, face an uphill battle.

To find out more about how the coronavirus pandemic is playing out for incarcerated learners across the country, I spoke with Susan Lockwood Roberts, the president of the Correctional Education Association.

Alison Griffin: Even under normal circumstances, educating incarcerated learners comes with its own unique set of challenges. What kind of barriers are correctional educators facing during the pandemic, which may not be obvious to those of us looking in from the outside?

Susan Lockwood Roberts: Every correctional administrator’s biggest concern must be keeping everyone behind the fence safe. That includes those who are incarcerated and those who are staffing the facility.

Social distancing in prisons and jails is almost impossible.  As a result, many facilities have gone into lockdown mode, meaning that incarcerated people are unable to leave their housing units unless necessary. So, programming has all but ground to a halt.

For example, in many states, education and other rehabilitative programming have either stopped or dramatically downsized. Where programming continues, class sizes are reduced so there are fewer people gathering together. This means that students who might have been going to class five days per week before the pandemic might only now be going two or three days a week.

In some states, staff access is limited to essential personnel—which pretty much means custody officers, medical staff, and food services. No one else is able to enter. If allowed, the best teachers can do is to create “packets” of assignments to be distributed to students who have to complete them on their own with little or no guidance.

While many classrooms in the free world have grown accustomed to having at least some technological support in their classrooms, which has eased the transition to distance learning, decades of divestment in correctional education have left most incarcerated students with few resources for success. Incarcerated learners are used to scraping by with the bare minimum, but this crisis is helping to expose just how little our society invests in them.

Griffin: Why is education important in the correctional setting, and, specifically, why should facilities continue to make education a priority during the pandemic?

Lockwood Roberts: During a pandemic, the health of everyone inside the facility must be the highest priority. But, when there are ways to keep learning going without jeopardizing the health and safety of either students or educators, it can serve a significant purpose.

Today, there are 2.3 million Americans in prisons or jails. They are disproportionately black, brown, and low-income. They are also disproportionately unlikely to have had prior access to quality education. In my experience, this is a group of learners who value educational opportunities, and are able to translate their learning into tangible contributions to society after release. In fact, research suggests that incarcerated people who participate in well-rounded correctional education programs have 43% lower odds of recidivating than those who do not.

Unfortunately, when correctional facilities are forced to shut down indefinitely, limiting incarcerated peoples’ movement even more than is typical and banning visitors and volunteers from entering, a profound negative impact is felt by everyone inside the facility. While we don’t yet have data on the effects of this pandemic, we often hear that rates of conflict, disciplinary infractions, and violence inside facilities spike when individuals do not have access to programming. Cramming people inside small cell blocks, without providing any way for them to stay productive or even distracted, will inevitably lead to an even more grim atmosphere.

Facility shutdowns can also have serious effects on the mental health of those who are incarcerated and the staff who supervise them. It is hard for people in the free world to handle quarantine, and we have all kinds of resources to keep us busy, from internet to television to video calling platforms to exercise, that are unavailable in correctional facilities. Many incarcerated people depend on visits from loved ones and programming to build a routine that feels meaningful. Having that all interrupted — even though incarcerated learners understand that the disruption is necessary — makes it that much harder.

We would never recommend that facilities have non-essential staff or volunteers come in during a pandemic; viral outbreaks are almost impossible to contain in prisons and jails, and preventing infection must be the top priority right now. But we know that, with the support of facilities, policymakers, and educators, it is possible to keep incarcerated students learning through a shutdown.  

Griffin: What kind of innovative solutions have you seen facilities implement in order to keep education programs running?

Lockwood Roberts: The best solution for incarcerated learners is the same solution that K-12 schools and colleges across the country have implemented: virtual learning. Devices like Chromebooks and tablets — which can be secured and connected to contained internet or cellular networks — can’t completely replace in-person instruction, but they can connect learners with large libraries of content, offer adaptive programs that provide greater support and differentiation than paper materials, and connect learners with their educators.

Some jurisdictions that had already obtained these devices are able to continue their programming with relatively few interruptions. For example, 18 states have partnered with a company called American Prison Data Systems, or APDS, to implement the use of educational tablets for incarcerated individuals. These devices include many of the same digital programs students in the free world use, as well as large libraries of e-books, rehabilitative video exercises, and other resources. And, unlike many other tablet providers, this company does not charge incarcerated learners or their loved ones to use their devices. Other companies, such as ATLO Software, use Launchbooks (a secure laptop) to provide educational and other rehabilitative programming to learners.

While all facilities are facing roadblocks in continuing their programming, the facilities that have already implemented these kinds of solutions are finding it much easier to keep learning going through this pandemic. But, these kinds of solutions are still the exception, not the standard. The vast majority of incarcerated people do not access any education at all — much less education supported by quality digital learning technology.

Griffin: Today, incarcerated people face some of the highest risks associated with this outbreak, and we’re hearing heartbreaking stories from facilities across the U.S. about prison and jail populations struggling to cope. Even beyond the logistical barriers created by the COVID-19 outbreak, the emotional stress must make it difficult for students to continue to learn. How can correctional educators support their students through this time? 

Lockwood Roberts: The best thing anyone can do is try to connect and encourage those who are dealing with the emotional stress associated with this outbreak. For many people, the sense of isolation can be one of the most damaging aspects of incarceration, and it can make re-entry even more difficult. Real, personal interactions can be hard to come by. So for many incarcerated learners, having some time every week with an educator who treats them with respect and dignity can be a major benefit of education in itself.

The easiest way for correctional educators to encourage their students is through virtual contact. Educators whose students have access to educational technology devices are in the best position to stay in touch with their classes. Others may be able to send their students electronic messages through telecommunication tablets that some facilities have implemented, although these messages often come with hefty fees. If those options are not available, educators can mail their students materials and words of encouragement.

It’s important that students have access to resources that can engage and stimulate them during this time — but for some, it may be even more important to know that folks on the outside care about them and are thinking of them. Whenever possible, correctional educators try to provide both of these benefits to their students.

Griffin: What additional resources or tools are correctional educators saying the need in order to get through this crisis?

Lockwood Roberts: The most simple resource correctional facilities need is books. Many prisons and jails are already short on books, and because many facilities have limited movement, incarcerated individuals are unable to visit their libraries. Some jurisdictions have e-books available on digital devices, but depending on the device provider, the download of the e-book comes with a cost to the user.  Most incarcerated individuals are indigent and have few avenues to make money, so the purchase of e-books is not an option. If e-books are not available, some facilities have authorized outside groups to mail books to individual students.

Many educators and facilities are working to see whether they can expand their digital infrastructure to connect students with education technology.  Some of these solutions can actually be implemented fairly quickly, with minimal set up, and can connect students with an extensive suite of learning resources.

Lastly, educators want content that students can navigate with little guidance. Even if they have to turn to hard copies, they want material that is self-explanatory, offers students clear instructions, and is engaging.

Something as simple as a book or a learning opportunity, which people on the outside take for granted, can make a world of difference for a learner completely cut off from the outside world, family, and loved ones. These are the kinds of investments that our correctional system is able to make and cannot afford to ignore.

Our country has spent the last several decades dismantling what was once a thriving correctional education system. Those actions were reflective of our broader willingness to write off incarcerated people. But, today, U.S. prisons and jails house millions of human beings, and we simply cannot afford to write them off.

Today, the United States spends $86 billion every year on a correctional system that is not working. We incarcerate our citizens at almost double the rate of any other developed country, and states spend 860 percent more on incarceration now than they did 30 years ago — but, still, the US correctional system does not prepare inmates for successful reentry into society. Ninety-five percent of people in prison will be released someday, but states rarely invest in their rehabilitation.

Finally, that mindset is beginning to shift.

Enter APDS, a public benefit corporation working to reduce this number dramatically by providing individualized education, rehabilitation, workforce training, and reentry support delivered via secure tablet computers inside of correctional facilities. For years, researchers have consistently found that recidivism rates are lower and employment outcomes are better when inmates have access to quality education, workforce preparation and rehabilitation. This program prepare inmates for successful re-entry into society, empower returning citizens to rebuild their communities by serving as possible role models and advocates, and creates safer prisons by disrupting the monotony and hopelessness that lead to violence.

APDS brings a revolutionary edtech solution designed specifically for corrections. APDS partners with correctional jurisdictions to map out a solution that fits their programmatic objectives and technology infrastructure. Prisons and jails face a myriad of challenges in delivering high-quality programming to everyone in their custody. They must balance security and custody constraints, facilities without wireless infrastructure, and program struggling to meet widely varying learning needs. APDS has built a solution that can be tailored to address each jurisdiction’s specific needs. Every other technology provider working in corrections charges inmates, or inmates’ loved ones, to use their devices.

APDS takes a different approach. APDS charges departments of corrections — never students or their families — for their tools. Their approach is based on the premise that correctional education tools that charge students just further entrench inequity and disillusionment within prisons. For an educational solution to fulfill its promise, it must be accessible to everyone.

Harris Ferrell, CEO, APDS says, “We focus first and foremost on outcomes – how can our technology and services be used to improve educational attainment, rehabilitative progress, and workforce readiness for every incarcerated learner? Every decision we make concerning our platform serves our goal of maximizing learning. We are not trying to make money off of our students, which would detract from the work we do to build the highest quality learning experience we can. Our goal is to enable departments of corrections to transform their correctional facilities into education centers.”

Since its founding in 2014, APDS has worked to bring the highest quality personalized learning technologies, which have become standard fare in K-12 classrooms, into the correctional setting. The company designed secure tablet computers that could connect to its networked data center and provide students secure access to approved content. The APDS learning management platform is designed to assess the individual educational, rehabilitative, and workforce readiness needs of each learner. The APDS platform then crafts a personalized learning plan and tracks each learner’s progress through the content – measuring progress achieved and time on task to report back to on-site staff. Their data portal enables the jurisdiction to determine where their learners need more support, assess whether interventions are working, and recognize learners who commit themselves to their learning pathways. Learners, in turn, are able to earn digital credentials and certificates as they progress, plan for a post-release job search by building a resume and exploring career opportunities in their area, and prepare for major credentialing exams like the GED.

Today, with deployments 88 facilities across 17 states, APDS continues to expand its footprint. With significant investments in product development, the company plans to launch its next-generation learner portal later this spring, which will incorporate new best practices in creating an easily navigable, engaging user experience. “As more and more correctional facilities commit to offering high-quality educational options, incarcerated learners are proving that their success is worth investing in. As a society, we cannot afford to write off everyone in prison or jail. We cannot afford to miss out on that much potential. In providing incarcerated learners with educational opportunities, we’re working to finally shut down the correctional system’s revolving door,” concludes Ferrell.

One big barrier to sustaining education via remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic has been students’ unequal access to advanced technology tools. Laptops and internet connections are not available in every household, and even students who usually have such resources available may now find themselves competing for them with siblings or parents studying or working from home.

But educators who want to make sure they reach every student don’t have to resort to mailing printed worksheets. In between high-tech and no-tech solutions for remote instruction, there’s a lot of middle ground to cover.

Here are three alternative ideas for how to ensure students can learn from home when necessary.

Any Device Will Do

Americans have lots of consumer technology tools to choose from, and they haven’t all made the same selections. According to a 2019 Pew Research Center report, 96 percent of adults own a cell phone and 81 percent own a smartphone. About half own a tablet computer, while three-quarters own desktop or laptop computers.

Using learning material and platforms that are accessible on any device may help more students stay on track with schoolwork while they’re stuck at home. That’s the approach the College Board is taking this spring with its adapted AP exams. The tests will be device-agnostic, meaning students will be able to complete them at home using computers, tablets or mobile phones, or even write their responses by hand and take a photo of them to submit.

The teenaged boys at Red Wing juvenile detention center are accustomed to six hours of school a day. They typically gather in classrooms to learn social studies, math, science and language arts from teachers who work at the corrections facility, located about 50 miles down the Mississippi River from St. Paul, Minnesota.

Educating the 70 or so students poses challenges even on the best of school days. About 70 percent of residents at Red Wing qualify for special education services. They arrive with disparate academic histories, so some of them need to earn biology credits, for example, while others don’t.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the difficulty of teaching each teenager has only increased.

“It’s a moving target,” says Patty Popp, director of special education for the Minnesota Department of Corrections. “It changes by the day, sometimes by the hour.”

With schools and colleges across the U.S. closed to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus, many students and instructors are grappling for the first time with questions about how to sustain learning when they can’t meet face to face.

That’s not a new problem for educators who work with jails, prisons and juvenile detention centers, where access to learning is often limited by security concerns, technology constraints and facilities designed for incarcerating—not teaching—people.

“Prison education is the ultimate distance learning model in many ways,” says Arti Finn, co-founder of American Prison Data Systems, a company that produces tablet computers used in prison education programs.

Pandemic conditions have introduced novel challenges for corrections education, however. Since the virus threatens the health and safety of people who live and work inside detention facilities, many sites are operating under new policies intended to prevent contagion. These new rules can interfere with learning programs that may have already been tenuous to begin with.

Although juvenile facilities are required by law to educate residents, adult jails and prisons are not, with some exceptions, says Susan Roberts, president of the Correctional Education Association. That means the leaders of prison facilities for adults largely have leeway to adapt or pause education programs as they see fit.

During the pandemic, the association has been holding weekly calls with state directors of correctional education, and these conversations have revealed a continuum of responses.

Access to libraries has been reduced at many facilities. At some, educators are no longer allowed inside, although they may be able to deliver paper materials for students to complete in their cells. At others, class sizes have been cut to limit exposure, so that students used to attending two daily school sessions now only participate in one, or only go three days a week instead of five.

“They’re totally shutting down, to trying to do things virtually if there’s a digital option,” Roberts says. “At most correctional facilities, that option isn’t available.”

Going Digital

A jail in Washington, D.C. is one facility that does have digital tools at its disposal. The detention center has had to modify its face-to-face classes to encourage social distancing, says deputy director Amy Lopez, but some incarcerated adult students are still able to continue their personalized learning plans by taking classes via tablet computer. The jail is working with leaders of programs that typically meet in person to try to develop online versions.

“So our for-credit students are still earning credits, and some of our partners, like the Pulitzer Center, have created and sent us lessons that are normally web-based to be loaded onto the tablets as well. For our students who don’t have tablets, we’ve been taking them paper-based lessons,” Lopez said in an email interview. “We also reserved some tablets, and when we had to quarantine some residents for observation, we’ve been providing them with tablets, too.”

At Red Wing, educators have tried to balance the need to reduce students’ exposure to other people with the reality that teenagers don’t take well to being cooped up.

“Especially with juveniles, to expect them to stay within their cottages all day is pretty tough,” Popp says.

A new rotating schedule allows half of a unit’s residents to travel to a classroom for face-to-face instruction while the other half stays put and teachers come to them. In-person instruction time has decreased, and to make up for lost hours, students now have more access to online curricular tools via tablets, which since last summer have been slowly introduced for classroom use.

“We went from that to ‘Everybody gets a tablet,’” Popp says. “It’s been a whirlwind for our teachers.”

Red Wing educators who are sick or at high risk of infection are staying home. Like their counterparts at traditional schools outside the world of corrections, they’re figuring out how to do their jobs remotely via technology.

“There’s one teacher who is out who is still teaching her course,” Popp says. “Another teacher is out for COVID leave who is overseeing all the oversight of the tablets, working with an assistant on-site to make sure the tablets are running. There’s a multitude of functions she’s able to do from home.”

As prison facilities and systems improvise, the Correctional Education Association awaits guidance from the U.S. Department of Education about the best ways to sustain learning behind bars during the pandemic. Doing so is a priority not only for students, but also for wardens and prison administrators who appreciate the role education plays in rehabilitating incarcerated people, Roberts says.

Unfortunately, though, as the health crisis worsens, “whether or not you get special education services might not necessarily be the No. 1 priority. No. 1 might be to keep the virus from spreading in the population,” Roberts says. “We want you to be alive.”

The Massachusetts Department of Correction is launching an education program for prisoners.

In a bid process, the state chose American Prison Data Systems, a public benefit corporation, to provide 228 tablets to incarcerated people in 10 prisons, according to a news release.

The tablets include programs on GED preparation, vocational training and re-entry planning, among others. There are no costs for using any programs on the tablets.

Incarcerated students in other states who used the corporation’s tablets were more than twice as likely to pass the GED and 70 percent more likely to complete their post-release re-entry plans compared to their peers, according to the news release.

Research shows that every dollar states invest in prison-based education can save taxpayers up to $5 in reduced incarceration costs.

Last year, West Virginia contracted with a company, Global Tel Link (GTL), to provide free tablets to prisoners. These kinds of initiatives are rapidly becoming more popular, as states grapple with the legacy of four decades of tough-on-crime policies and renewed public calls for more rehabilitative prisons.

And it sounds great. Until inmates realize the company charges users every time they use the tablets, including 25 cents a page for emails and 3 cents a minute to read e-books. By that calculation, most inmates would end up paying about $15 for each novel or autobiography they attempt to read. To people who have little to no money, that’s not a benefit. That’s exploitation. The only beneficiary, aside from Global Tel Link, is West Virginia, which receives 5% of the profits.

GTL isn’t alone in profiting off of prisoners. Exploitation of prisoners for profit is cropping up more and more across the criminal justice landscape.

JPay, which is owned by Securus Technologies, charges inmates to make calls, send emails and listen to music and audiobooks. In some states, Edovo (Education Over Obstacles) has charged inmates to rent tablets.

Many prisons now ban in-person visits, then allow companies to charge $12.99 or more for video calls. Prison phone calls can cost up to $3.99 a minute. Prison shoes fall apart within weeks, and replacements are only available from a special catalog. Only sweatshirts are provided for the winter. Meals are nutritionally insufficient and, over time, must be supplemented to maintain good health.

All these necessities — shoes, jackets, phone calls, canned tuna from the commissary — rack up fees well above the market rate on the outside. But they often aren’t paid for by prisoners, who have little or no means to earn income. They are paid primarily by families who are often among our poorest. This hidden tax drives already vulnerable communities deeper into poverty and hopelessness.

But a charge to read is especially egregious. The great resource in prison is time: the time to think and improve. The best way for prisoners to fill that time is to read. Reading opens up access to instruction across any subject. It teaches job skills. It reminds those left behind that a world exists beyond the cage.

I would know: It happened that way for me. At 18, I was sentenced to life in prison with little hope of parole. For two years, I was depressed and hopeless, with no purpose or goals. Then a fellow lifer introduced me to books. I started reading every day: history, self-help, newspapers, textbooks, biographies. Reading taught me not only could I make the world a better place, but how to make it a better place: by getting others to read, too.

He and I founded a weekly book club. We got our GEDs. Our Maryland prison didn’t offer a college degree program, so we researched and wrote a proposal that helped persuade them to start one.

We taught résumé writing and career guidance classes. We helped more than a hundred of our fellow inmates prepare for success in the world beyond the fence. We made dozens of life-long readers. We gave ourselves hope and purpose and the tools for success.

It never would have happened without free books. At one point, my family spent hundreds of dollars over just a few months answering my collect calls. But they didn’t have endless amounts of money to continue that, and I certainly didn’t have money. The idea of spending 3 cents a minute on a book was impossible. I didn’t have 3 cents.

You can’t imagine how life-changing it was to realize that my purpose was right there, free for the finding, between the covers of our prison library’s books.

We don’t have to give in to this sort of vulture capitalism. There are charities that provide free books and reading materials. American Prison Data Systems, where I work as the director of engagement, charges correctional systems, not inmates, for tablets. They provide a free online reading library for anyone using their devices, in addition to adaptive education programs.

In institutions where tablets are not yet an option, prisoners should simply get access to the books already in prison libraries, which are frequently restricted.

Each of those simple steps, though, ladder up to a large question: Will society value the potential of men and women behind bars? Over the past several decades, this country has become numb to an unimaginably bloated prison system. The only way we can get around the pain of knowing that 2.3 million people are behind bars today is by telling ourselves that people in prison deserve retribution. This is a dangerous line of thinking if we allow it to justify a prison system that terrorizes and traumatizes millions of people a year — who are disproportionately black, brown or low-income — without providing pathways to rehabilitation.

Being locked in a cage for years is sufficient retribution in itself. Everything else in prison should be about rehabilitation.

When prisoners have resources for growth and maturation, they return to society as better parents and family members, active contributors to their communities, and productive workers. Their loved ones are less likely to be drawn into the cycle of violence, their communities grow safer, our economy becomes stronger and they are far less likely to return to prison.

I was lucky. I made it out. I wrote books, with the fellow lifer I mentioned earlier, that proved our good intentions, and our sentences were reduced. If we hadn’t, the state of Maryland would likely have paid more than $3 million (about $44,000 a year at likely 35 more years each) to keep us locked up for our full terms. That’s just for the two of us. But instead, we’re free. We’re working. We’re running businesses. We’re paying taxes. We’re paying it forward and inspiring others.

There are not a thousand inmates in prison right now like us. There are not 10,000. There are hundreds of thousands. Imagine where we’d be if our society made a few basic investments — like covering the costs of books — for each of them. Imagine how much human potential we’re losing every day we fail to do so.

More and more incarcerated students are getting access to educational technology. These technologies offer access where education is limited, but not much is known about the quality of the programs.

Getting an education in prison can make all the difference for inmates, even reduce their chances of going back after they are released. But it is hard for prisons and jails to offer classes. They don’t have enough space or money, oftentimes. That is where tablets come in. Students behind bars can use tables to take online classes, do research, read e-books. There is a lot that new technology can’t fix, though, as NPR’s Jenny Gathright reports.

JENNY GATHRIGHT, BYLINE: There is virtually no classroom space at the D.C. Jail, and there’s not a lot of money to hire more teachers. But 31-year-old Keith Sweptson doesn’t need a traditional classroom.

KEITH SWEPTSON: Right here, I’ma (ph) show you…

GATHRIGHT: Sweptson is holding a tablet, the tool he’s been using to get his GED. Before he got to jail last year, he had a ninth-grade education.

SWEPTSON: I work tabs, so this – you know, you could tab a lot of things. See? They have Khan Academy.

GATHRIGHT: Sweptson pulls up a screen full of different tabs, like a Web browser. It’s how he saves his assignments and instructional videos.

SWEPTSON: And it gives you – it’s like a teacher online, just, like, on a chalkboard, like, right – it shows you examples and stuff like that.

GATHRIGHT: D.C.’s Department of Corrections is expanding its programs so more students here can use the tablets to take college courses, get their GEDs, learn English. Tablets don’t require much space. All you need are charging blocks and a few tutors who can offer students one-on-one help. They’re also relatively inexpensive to implement.

Quincy Booth, the head of the D.C. Department of Corrections, says many students here in D.C. like learning on the tablet because it gives them more control.

QUINCY BOOTH: The tablets allow people to learn in their own pace and in their own way, as well as it allows people to learn privately.

GATHRIGHT: But Booth knows that there are advantages to in-person instruction.

BOOTH: We know that tablets can’t be the be all, end all.

GATHRIGHT: That’s why local professors come and teach here, and the jail offers hands-on vocational training.

BOOTH: At the end of the day, you have to have personal touch, personal connection. So we have to have a mixture of offerings.

GATHRIGHT: But with limited space and limited resources, more and more prisons are offering online education. They’re partnering with schools like Ashland University, based in Ohio. They have programs in as many as 50 jails and prisons across the country, including here in D.C. It’s a highly scalable model. If you can deliver a class online to one student, why not hundreds or more?

MICHELLE TOLBERT: Because it is so scalable, it can quickly grow without really knowing whether or not it’s a high-quality education.

GATHRIGHT: Michelle Tolbert researches adult education at the think tank RTI International. She says correctional facilities need to be critical consumers when it comes to tablets. She says there hasn’t been enough research on the quality of the programs these tablets are providing. And plus, many of the vendors who supply the tablets aren’t primarily educational organizations.

TOLBERT: Most of them have a history of supplying other services and facilities, like music and videos and pay phones. And they see education as a new market and a new way to make money.

GATHRIGHT: In West Virginia, for example, a tablet company is charging inmates by the minute to read e-books. Tolbert says the tablets do have a lot of potential, though, because they can help incarcerated students have experiences that students on the outside might take for granted.

TOLBERT: Think about it. I mean, we all do our research online. If you don’t have access to online resources, it’s very hard to do a research report for a college classroom.

GATHRIGHT: And this is not a typical college classroom. New technology like tablets can’t solve problems inmates are having with their basic needs at the D.C. Jail. The D.C. Department of Health has cited the jail numerous times for problems like leaky roofs and walls, improper handling of food and a failure to maintain acceptable room temperatures. Booth told NPR the jail works to address issues as soon as they hear about them.

As for Sweptson, he says things in the jail changed for him after he got his tablet and got the chance to move to a specialized education unit.

SWEPTSON: Big difference – on the other units, it’s a lot of problems walking around.

GATHRIGHT: Sweptson says he’s less stressed here because when he’s bored, he can pick up his tablet and read a book or watch a TED talk. His studies have also gotten him thinking about the next steps in his education after he passes the final test he needs for his GED.

SWEPTSON: I never had college on my mind before I came here, but now it’s like it’s on my mind. Like, I really think I’d do good in college.

GATHRIGHT: After he’s sentenced, Sweptson will leave this jail and get sent to a federal prison. Whether he has access to college and what form that access takes depends on the federal institution.

Jenny Gathright, NPR News, Washington.

Innovation

The team at APDS believes that just because someone is incarcerated does not mean that they have to stop learning. Their team consists of innovation experts who are dedicated to corrections reform. The United States spends $70 billion a year on corrections, which is more than most of the other countries in the world. Despite this, APDS feels corrections is not doing enough to lead these people to better lives. There are also 50K incidents of prison violence a year, which is far too large of a number.

It has been proven that education, rehabilitation, and reentry systems do indeed work. This is where APDS comes in: they feel they can help these issues by providing incarcerated learners with the digital tools that they need to succeed. APDS puts correction officers and inmates at the center of their work. Their concerns are heard, and they will be given the tools they need to reach their goals. APDS strives to empower and rehabilitate their users, as opposed to exploiting and recriminalizing them. While their competitors charge inmates fees, often large ones, to use their services, APDS does not pass on costs to their end users as the goal is to help them, not overcharge them.

You might have read about it.  Right before Thanksgiving, the internet exploded over a report of incarcerated individuals being charged by the minute to read material that is FREE through Project Gutenberg.  Specifically, in West Virginia, the Department of Corrections provides “free” tablets to incarcerated individuals.  However, “FREE” actually comes at a cost…users have to pay $0.05 per minute to read books, listen to music or play games.  They pay $0.25 per minute for video visitations, $0.25 per written message, and $0.50 to send a photo with a message.

Putting this into perspective, I thought about how I used to limit my children’s text messaging because of the cost.  When I was finally able to move to “unlimited text and data”, I was ecstatic. The difference, though, is that I am earning way more than the prison wage in West Virginia, which is between $0.04 and $0.58 per hour.  According to the report, a tablet user in a West Virginia correctional facility would have to work four hours to listen to a four-minute song.

“Who cares?  They are prisoners!”  Okay, I get that.  I see how some people might think that incarcerated individuals don’t deserve to have tablets, or listen to music, or read books, or visit with their loved ones.  I see how some people might think that incarcerated individuals should have to pay to do these things. I have been a victim of crime.  I wanted the perpetrator to be punished.  I get it.

But I also know that 95% of those who are incarcerated are released to their communities at some point.  They need to be rehabilitated.  They need to return to their communities with skills  that enable them to be gainfully employed so they can support themselves and their families.  They need to be able to remain connected to their families and other support systems while they are incarcerated so they have a better chance at success when they return to their communities. And, typically, the incarcerated individuals aren’t the ones footing the bill for these tablet charges…their families are.

As President of the Executive Board of the Correctional Education Association, I was contacted about this issue and asked if I had an opinion.  I wasn’t able to speak on behalf of the organization, because it hasn’t taken an official stand.  However, I definitely have an opinion.  It’s one thing to charge a user for a transaction.  We all deal with this. If I go to an ATM to withdraw money, I might have to pay a fee if it isn’t part of my bank’s network.  But I have a choice to avoid entities that charge me to make a transaction.   Those who are incarcerated are at the mercy of the jurisdiction incarcerating them.  If the jurisdiction chooses a provider such as GTL (Glogal Tel Link), as West Virginia has done, the users are at the mercy of the provider.

Is there a solution?  Of course there is.  American Prison Data Systems (APDS) is a public benefits corporation (PBC) with the tag-line, “Changing Corrections for Good.”  APDS provides rehabilitative programming at NO COST to the user.  Individuals using APDS tablets can access education, job training and reentry programming. They don’t have to pay to read books from Project Gutenberg.  Their devices include access to the National Corrections Library which includes current titles along with Project Gutenberg titles…at no cost to the user.  APDS devices are used by jurisdictions who provide post-secondary college programs through the Pell ESI program.  The devices are used by jurisdictions providing education programming leading to a high school credential.  Some jurisdictions provide job training courses and reentry preparation using the devices.  ALL of this is provided at NO COST to the user or his family. No exploitation.  APDS is about rehabilitating individuals who are incarcerated so they can return to their communities and remain law-abiding citizens.

This isn’t the first time I have written about APDS.  When I was the Director of Juvenile Education for the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC), we used APDS tablets in the school at the Madison Juvenile Correctional Facility.  The impact was incredibly positive…so positive that I accepted a consulting contract with APDS when I retired from IDOC. I believe in the mission of APDS, and I can attest that they truly want to “Change Corrections for Good.”  There is absolutely no reason to exploit individuals who are incarcerated. There is no reason to exploit their families.  Rehabilitative programming can be provided at no cost to the users.  Jurisdictions need to dig deep and realize that every dollar they spend on educating individuals who are incarcerated results in a savings of five dollars in the costs of continued incarceration and recidivism.

American Prison Data Systems. Changing Corrections for Good.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Jerard Briscoe is away at school. Or at least, that’s what he tells his kids.

It’s a plausible story. He studies for GED math exams. He reads e-books and takes courses using a tablet computer. He even wears a uniform: an orange jumpsuit and white Velcro sneakers.

“If you’re at college, you can’t go home everyday anyway. I just put my mindset like I’m really at school,” he says. “So when I tell my kids that, I’m lying a little bit, but I’m not really lying, because I am at school.”

He thinks for a beat.

“Alternative school.”

That idea is spreading through the corridors at the D.C. Central Detention Facility, slipping past security checkpoints and into cells where incarcerated residents watch Khan Academy videos and craft their resumes. It’s a big shift from just a few years ago, when inmates say they passed long days with little to do but play cards and pick fights.

That was before Amy Lopez showed up. In 2017, the petite Texan arrived at the jail with an armada of plans and the energy to launch them. She invited college professors to teach for-credit classes inside, in person. She purchased tablets to offer short-term learning opportunities to transient inmates. And she created a residential learning bloc named for the phoenix, the mythical bird who rises from its ashes to have a second chance at life.

“Every single person I talk to—staff members or incarcerated students—will say it was a game-changer when she arrived,” says Marc M. Howard, director of the Prisons and Justice Initiative at Georgetown University. “I’ve never seen an administration, a staff, an agency so supportive of programming for its incarcerated residents. I think they’re a model of what corrections officials around the country should be.”

To Lopez, a former public school teacher, the radical changes make perfect sense. Her facility houses 1,800 people a day who have gaps in their schooling and who may one day be back out in the world.

As Lopez easily navigates the maze of cinder block hallways and hollers code numbers to an unseen elevator operator, she muses aloud in her Lone Star drawl: “What if you treated everyone as if this were an academic campus?”

From Public School to the Prison System

Lopez is now working toward a doctorate in developmental education, but as an undergrad, she majored in theater. That stage training is surprisingly relevant, she says: “I use it every day.”

She taught drama, English, reading, art and speech in Texas public schools before moving into administration as an assistant principal, and later a principal. Seeking something new, she switched to prison education, becoming principal at a juvenile detention center that sometimes housed boys as young as 10.

She didn’t get much training before making the shift.

“That probably made me incredibly good at my job,” she says. “Because I didn’t know any better, I ran it like a regular school. We had positive interventions and supports. … Everything improved. Serious incidents went down to nothing.”

Her subsequent work with incarcerated kids and adults didn’t go unnoticed. When the Obama administration sought to reduce recidivism by building a school district within the federal prison system, Lopez got a call.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates asked her to leave Texas for D.C. to become the first superintendent of a new Bureau of Prisons school district. The plan was to create personalized education plans for each inmate. A pilot program would test the use of tablets in combining online education with classroom teaching in a prison setting.

Lopez’s new gig, chief education administrator for the federal BOP, was announced in November 2016.

“I was the only one of those they ever had,” she says, ruefully. “The hot minute that I was there.”

After Donald Trump began his presidency, Lopez lasted five months.

“It’s terrible to be famous for being fired,” Lopez says. “I went out with Sally Yates; I’d go out with Sally Yates any day of the week.”

She wasn’t unemployed for long. D.C. Department of Corrections Director Quincy Booth, himself a former teacher, scooped her up. Together, they crafted her a new position: deputy director of college and career readiness and professional development. If the inmates across the whole federal system couldn’t benefit from her ideas, at least those in the nation’s capital might.

It didn’t take long for guards and administrators to notice the effects her programs were having on inmates, who Lopez calls residents.

“It’s awakening the giant in them,” says correctional officer Temesghen Andemichael. “Education is the key to changing their circumstances, they believe in that.”

Testing Tablets

It turns out, people in jail love TED Talks.

The videos are inspiring, informative and—perhaps most importantly—available any time on the tablets they can borrow for hours on end.

It’s loud on the Phoenix Unit, the special learning wing where these residents live and test educational pilot programs. Large fans whirr constantly overhead. Two floors of numbered cells surround open hallways just wide enough for a row of picnic tables. Spanish-speakers cluster around one, studying English. At another, a man tackles math problems with a calculator.

The tablet computers allow inmates to drown out the din. They slip on specially designed headphones and immerse themselves in recorded lectures and digital texts, with the occasional break to listen to music from preapproved radio stations.

“It kind of takes you away from this place sometimes,” Briscoe says.

Putting this type of tech tool in a prison or jail can be a hard sell to corrections officials, though.

“They think something bad is going to happen,” Lopez says. “It takes time to build enough relationship capacity to know I wasn’t going to do something crazy.”

But within her first few months at the D.C. jail, she got support to bring in the tablets. At first, the computers primarily offered online college courses from Ashland University.

“I went through and found people who already had a high school diploma or GED to fill out their FAFSAs,” Lopez says, referring to the federal forms to apply for financial aid. “I didn’t have a team at the time. I went from cell to cell recruiting, did all the paperwork.”

Then, Lopez got more programing for the tablets from American Prison Data Systems, a for-profit company that charges facilities, not inmates or their families, for the tools. The Samsung devices are wrapped in thick cases and loaded with education software selected to serve residents’ needs.

The computers can’t access the internet, per jail rules, but they’ve got videos and a library of books that inmates can read without having to wait weeks for their families to send them Amazon paperbacks. Favorites, residents say, include self-help books, stories about overcoming hardship and works by Malcolm Gladwell.

The tablets also come with courses that residents can take to pursue their own educational goals at their own speed. As a group, incarcerated people have less education than people on the outside, but their levels of degree attainment vary.

That makes a corrections facility like a one-room schoolhouse full of students who have different needs. With the tablets, ESL students can take classes from a company called Voxy to learn practical English at the same time that their unit mates take online college courses from Ashland.

Among the most popular tablet programs here are entrepreneurship and career readiness classes, and residents muse about their business plans for food trucks and construction companies and nonprofits designed to help fellow former prisoners.

Incarcerated people like entrepreneurial education in part because they know it’s hard to find work with a criminal record, says Chris Wilson, director of engagement for APDS and author of “The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose.”

“We have this stigma of being convicted of a crime,” he says. “Everyone wants to be their own boss.”

Residents have gotten creative with the tools. Russell Gaskins, known throughout the jail as Rock, has been learning Spanish from his five-year-old daughter. He wanted to teach her something in return.

“She has a tablet. So what we’ve been doing is downloading the same books. And we’ve been teaching each other, having conversations about the books; she’s learning how to read,” Gaskins says. “Having the tablet, having the same books, we can look at the same pictures. I’m still intimate in her life without being there.”

Teaching Through Transience

In a prison, inmates can struggle to find enough stimuli to fill their days—and years. In a jail, the challenge is to snatch fleeting chances to meaningfully change their lives.

At the D.C. jail, some residents are there to serve short misdemeanor sentences. Others are awaiting trial for more serious charges. Still others have been sentenced and may be transferred at any time to a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility hundreds of miles away. Lengths of stay range from less than a week to several years.

“It’s a limbo land, and unfortunately it’s a limbo land they’re really thriving in,” Lopez says. “There are days we go to hand out a tablet and they’ve been picked up in the middle of the night by U.S. marshals and taken off. We don’t have any warning. They’re sometimes pleading with a lawyer to ask a judge, ‘Can I stay for the end of a semester?’”

This disruption can be detrimental to earning credentials. Yet some residents say their time in jail is the first occasion they’ve had to really focus on schoolwork. Inside, they don’t have to worry about the gun violence, hunger and hustling that marked their lives on the outside.

“Even if you don’t finish and you happen to be getting transferred, say to the BOP, your mind is still on what you were trying to accomplish here, too. So this really, really do help us,” says James Johnson, a Phoenix Unit resident. “Even if I get transferred today or tomorrow, my mindset is going to be on trying to find something else to do, positive, some type of educational program. Because you ain’t going to get this everywhere.”

Lopez advises inmates who are transferring to prison elsewhere to immediately ask in their new facility, “What’s available to me?”

Despite the transience in their jail, Lopez and Booth have complemented the tablet program with traditional, for-credit college courses taught in person by Georgetown professors. Faculty bring in Georgetown students who live on campus to study alongside their incarcerated classmates. At the D.C. jail, the university offers the country’s first co-ed class for people in the system.

The welcome Howard has experienced in the facility in D.C.’s southeast corner contrasts sharply with the attitude his colleagues encounter in other parts of the country, where there’s a sense, he says, that incarcerated residents are “simply to be warehoused, held in cages, and they’re not deserving of any opportunities.”

“We feel very much wanted, partners on the same team,” he says. “That’s very unusual.”

Howard has lost students mid-semester. This week, one of the few women in the Georgetown program was sentenced to what will likely be five years in federal prison. Almost simultaneously, another student was released unexpectedly.

“We had testified on his behalf at his sentencing hearing. The judge said what he was doing in our program was so good, he would support his release,” Howard says. “On Monday, I testified. He was released 15 minutes later. On Tuesday, he was in our Georgetown class” on campus.

Among the Georgetown inmate-students is Joel Castón. He’s been in the D.C. jail for three years, waiting for a judge to revisit the life sentence he received as a teenager, when he was convicted of murder (a verdict he has appealed). He’s written a book about investing and personal finance, and he studies Mandarin in his free time. Lopez jokes that she assumes she’ll be working for him some day.

Castón uses a tablet to study other topics, like business soft skills. He’s been in the system so long that the tool has offered him otherwise rare encounters with modern technology.

“The tablet has become my companion,” he says. “Just think about the leisure of not spending idle time inside a room—you can utilize that time to actually study something of substance. That’s fabulous. Now you can actually maximize this experience.”

Measuring Change

On weekends, with her pet greyhound in the back seat, Lopez drives her blue coupe all over the D.C. area, to battlefields and museums and even way up north to see Niagara Falls.

She savors the liberty to learn that she hopes the jail’s tablets offer residents, albeit on a small scale. The freedom to read a book when they choose. To move forward in a class at their own pace.

Riding in that car on the way to a correctional officers meeting, Lopez mentions she’s never been the victim of a crime. Still, she can’t help but wonder how much punishment is enough to atone for the acts that incarcerated people are convicted of committing.

“What does more time do?” she asks.

In the long term, Lopez wants to change Americans’ attitudes toward students like hers, mostly men of color whom she views primarily as “really enthusiastic adult learners.”

“I don’t look up their offenses,” she says. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

More concretely, Lopez wants to figure out how effective her programs are, analyzing, for example, whether blended learning is more helpful than tablet-based study alone. And she wants to set clearer benchmarks for each student. She hopes to change their trajectories after they’re released, making sure the schoolwork they do in jail ultimately helps them get better jobs that pay living wages.

A watershed RAND evaluation of correctional education programs published in 2013 found that inmates who participate in such programs have 43 percent lower odds of recidivating than those who don’t. Yet it may be difficult to measure recidivism among Lopez’s students, who can be sent all over the country to carry out their sentences.

Even so, she and her colleagues are working to prove the program’s worth. The tablet system allows jail educators to track the progress that individual inmates are making in their skills and classes. APDS is collecting data from multiple facilities where its tablets are used to assess what’s working. In one jurisdiction, the company’s program helped increase GED pass rates by 57 percent, says Arti Finn, APDS co-founder.

Anecdotal evidence looks promising so far.

“We were not even a month into our pilot program when Director Booth and I had a meeting, and he told me there’s been a culture shift already. He’d never seen it before,” says Howard, the Georgetown professor. “He would hear people discussing what they’d learned in class, debating philosophy. He overheard a phone call where someone said, ‘Mom, can you believe I’m in a Georgetown class?’ with such pride.”

In addition to the hopes Lopez has for her students, they have goals of their own. Briscoe wants to earn his GED, study information technology through Ashland University and help his three daughters and two sons with their homework.

But he doesn’t think only of himself. He advocates on behalf of his peers who have less access to resources than he has on the Phoenix Unit. It would reduce rates of violence, he says, if more residents had more opportunities to study.

He also thinks it would prepare them not only to reenter the outside world, but to succeed there.

“A lot of people come to jail and just leave with nothing. They don’t know nothing but what they knew before they came,” he says. “If you had something to go out there and look forward to, there’s less chance you’ll be turned back.”

Prison is a punishment, but it can also be an opportunity for inmates to improve their lives, and for prisons to improve the communities they serve. Inmates who participate in correctional education programs are 43 percent less likely to recidivate, according to RAND. By providing services that help turn convicts into productive members of society, prisons can help rehabilitate troubled lives, mend broken families, and save taxpayers money.

None of this is new information to corrections executives, but until recently, it’s been hard — if not impossible — to deliver effective rehabilitation services.

That’s a problem American Prison Data Systems (APDS) has solved, with a robust digital platform and a fleet of secure Samsung tablets.

A New Way for Inmates to Learn

APDS was founded in 2012 and incorporated as a public benefit corporation in 2013. Before that, no one offered mobile-based programming for inmates.

“Most prisons were still using print media,” says Mott Middleton, chief revenue officer for APDS. “Some jurisdictions had small computer labs with old computers, and they would cycle inmates through, but that’s difficult when certain individuals can’t be mixed. And these were static programs, not rich in data mining or data integration. We are able to leverage online resources and proprietary algorithms to deliver personalized content and adaptive learning models.”

The APDS system starts by running users through a series of assessments that scientifically evaluate their education level, risks and needs. “We’re looking for things like criminogenic thinking and general behavior indicators, so we’re getting them into the right programming,” Middleton explains. “For instance, one person might need more anger management, another might need socialization skills, and another might just need pure literacy.”

That information feeds back into APDS’ custom data portal, which allows the prison or jurisdiction to see, down to a granular level, how individuals and groups are performing.

The goal is for each inmate to receive at least five hours of daily programming. Some prisons purchase a limited number of tablets that inmates can use in a designated programming area. However, most prisons opt for a one-to-one model. This ensures each inmate gets their five hours and lets prisons incentivize participation.

“Throughout the day, inmates use their tablet for job training and rehabilitation services,” says Middleton. “At the end of the day, based on their engagement and behavior, incentive portals unlock. If they’ve hit their programming milestones, they can watch a movie or listen to an Audible audiobook.”

From Behind Bars to Ahead of the Curve

More than 700,000 convicted criminals are released from federal and state prisons each year, according to RAND, and 40 percent of them return within three years. APDS wants to change those numbers. “People come into the system with a set of skills. If we can help them acquire a different set of skills prerelease, then they’ve got a different path post-release, and that impacts recidivism.”

Inmates can even search and apply for jobs via a secure, proprietary app called National Corrections Work. It also helps them create resumes, inventory their interests and view local job listings. “We’re aligning job skills to the job market and getting them prepared for those jobs. Then, depending on their jurisdiction and where they are in their programming, the application will let them apply for jobs and secure employment prerelease, so that on day one, walking out of the facility, they know what they’re supposed to be doing. They’ve got a purpose.”

Middleton says APDS also provides value to prisons, via the data portal and by helping meet legislative compliance rules. For example, in New York City, prisons are mandated to provide five hours of programming per day, and there’s not enough classroom space or instructors to do that in person.

“Core to who we are as a public benefits company, we pride ourselves on delivering a non-exploitative service. We don’t charge inmates’ friends or families for the service. The jurisdictions provide the service. So, we’re not creating an environment of haves and have-nots. We’re very passionate about that last statement. We receive letters from incarcerated individuals on a daily basis, and it’s the same theme: ‘Thank you for believing in us. Thank you for giving me a tool to better myself. Thank you for giving me a second chance.’”

Incarcerated learners who use APDS are twice as likely to pass the GED as nonusers, and reentry plan completion rates have increased by 70 percent for APDS users. “We’ve seen a numbered increase in GED attainment,” adds Middleton. “We’re moving people through postsecondary education and helping them get BA degrees. Those are things they never thought they’d be able to do. We also have anecdotal evidence from facilities about behavior improvements.”

Gated Content for Gated Users

Corrections executives understand the value of rehabilitative services, but given the risks associated with incarceration, security has to be the top priority. APDS has taken steps to prevent both digital and physical threats.

With a standard tablet, physical security risks might include the weaponization of charging cords or glass shards, but all APDS tablets are protected by 810G military-grade ruggedized cases designed specifically to prevent inmates from tampering with, accessing or damaging the tablet. And when tablets aren’t in use, they’re housed in charge carts located in a secure, facility-designated location.

The digital security is much more complicated and robust. Wrapped around all the programming and reentry resources is APDS’ proprietary security system with 24/7 live agent monitoring. “With our solution, incarcerated users can only access what we let them access,” says Middleton. “They don’t have freedom to surf the web. They’re not accessing Facebook. It’s not a phone application. This is pure programming. We control access starting with the device itself and continue through the actual connectivity side, so inmates cannot break outside of our program.”

For device-level security, APDS leverages Samsung Knox, a defense-grade security platform that’s built into all Samsung smartphones and tablets. APDS also uses Knox Configure to customize the tablets, lock down settings on the devices, download approved whitelist apps, remove unapproved apps and ensure that the devices only connect to the secure APDS network.

“We use Samsung Knox for its unparalleled customizability and security,” says Middleton. “It allows us to quickly configure and deploy devices while providing a perfect record on security. We would not have had the success we’ve had without Samsung — not just because of the technology, but because of the partnership. When we are looking at new adaptations or unique deployment models, we can reach out for help with problem-solving and trouble-shooting. The technical consulting, the free exchange of information, the heads up around device changes — all of that helps us make our solution more effective and more secure.”

The APDS network has “no vulnerability,” according to white-hat hacking firm Coalfire technologies, and after more than 9 million hours of inmate usage, there have been no digital or physical threats.

But there has been plenty of progress. Today, APDS provides services to more than 66 facilities across 17 states. Last year, 11,000 incarcerated learners used the system. For Middleton and her colleagues, that’s extremely rewarding. “We think we’re changing the world, one inmate at a time.”

We are in the process of putting into practice a new social contract between business and society. The most recent evidence is the Business Roundtable’s August announcement that 181 CEOs of America’s largest companies were committed “to lead for the benefit of all stakeholders.”

As I wrote with my fellow co-founders of the B Corp movement: “While it is appropriate to note, even celebrate, the Business Roundtable’s announcement as a sign of an accelerating culture shift, it is important to recognize that the people who are demanding this shift are demanding action.” More than 30 CEOs from B Corps like Amalgamated Bank, Lemonade and Patagonia took out an ad in the August 25, 2019, Sunday edition of The New York Times to express their eagerness to help the Business Roundtable CEOs turn their bold words into concrete actions.

Many of the businesses who signed the open letter to Business Roundtable CEOs are also on the recently released annual Best For The World list, created by B Lab, the nonprofit behind the B Corp movement, which honors the B Corps achieving the most positive impact, as well as those making the largest measurable improvements to their positive impact on people and planet each and every year. These 2019 Best For The World honorees shine a path for the Business Roundtable (BRT) to follow in achieving each of its five newly announced commitments:

BRT Commitment No. 1: “Delivering value to our customers. We will further the tradition of American companies leading the way in meeting or exceeding customer expectations.”

• Serve those most marginalized. Mass incarceration directly impacts more than 7.5 million Americans and their families and communities. According to the U.S Department of Justice, roughly 70% of incarcerated people return to prison or jail within 3 years of release. American Prison Data Systems provides incarcerated learners with the digital tools they need to succeed as returning citizens. In partnership with corrections personnel, ADPS provides safe, secure, curated content and customized instruction to reduce recidivism and help people rebuild their lives and contribute to their communities. Robert Green, director of the Maryland Department of Correction and Rehabilitation, said, “You’re looking at increasing their grade-level testing 3 or 4 grade levels in 60 days. That’s incredible.”
• See customers as whole people. For health care provider Northwest Permanente, delivering value to their customers includes tackling issues outside the clinic. “Over 60% of health issues are around housing, security, education, and transportation,” says Carolyn Allison of Northwest Permanente. “As physicians, our voices are among the most trusted, yet the field of medicine has been slow to respond to the climate crisis.” Northwest Permanente recently released a climate action plan whose first tenet is to “ensure that the most vulnerable populations in our communities have a leading voice in planning for climate interventions.” This broader vision of customer care is consistent with their nonprofit parent Kaiser Permanente’s new social health network platform, called Thrive Local, that connects health and social service providers to better coordinate care.

Over the past four decades, the United States doubled down on a “tough on crime” philosophy. It worked. We raced ahead as the world’s leader in incarceration, even as violent crime declined. We doled out life sentences to one out of every 2,000 people. Then, in 1994, President Clinton banned the use of federal Pell grants to fund higher education for people in prison, forcing the vast majority of prison higher education programs to close.Eighty-three percent of people released from prison are rearrested within a decade.

Finally, the conversation is changing. A bipartisan cadre of governors and congressional representatives are advocating for more forgiving, rehabilitative prison policies. The Trump administration is working to roll back Clinton’s zero-tolerance crime bill by expanding President Obama’s “Second Chance Pell” experiment, which funds college courses in a select few prisons.

It’s long overdue. Second Chance Pell currently funds college for only 12,000 inmates a year — or 0.5 percent of the 2.2 million incarcerated people. Expanding the program to reach more of the estimated 463,000 Pell-eligible people behind bars could be transformative.

As the debate over whether to lift Clinton’s Pell ban altogether generates renewed attention in Congress, though, we must remember that education alone will not undo the full damage of the tough-on-crime era. But, through a minor policy shift, states can leverage the swell of support for prison education to counteract lengthy sentencing practices — ensuring the expansion of Second Chance Pell also shrinks the overall prison population.

So-called “earned time credit,” which gives students who participate in educational programs time off of their sentences, is taking hold in a growing number of states. Earned time credit policies incentivize incarcerated learners to participate in educational programming, ensuring more of the 95 percent of prisoners who will eventually reenter society do so with the backing of education, while also turning the tide on mass incarceration and potentially saving taxpayers money through reduced recidivism costs. Such policies cost nothing to implement, and they signal a state’s recognition that vengefully long sentences do nothing to help perpetrators, victims, or society at large.

Earned time credit has the dual effect of reducing costs and improving outcomes, shortening students’ time behind bars while harnessing the power of education to make it less likely that they will reoffend after release. In states such as Washington and Oregon, these policies have saved taxpayers millions of dollars.

These efforts are supported by a strong evidence base: a 2013 meta-analysis of correctional education programs found that education reduces the likelihood of recidivism, and increases post-release job placement, by about 13 percent. For every dollar spent on correctional education, researchers estimate that states save five dollars on reincarceration costs. And tying education to early release amplifies these benefits even further, allowing students to begin contributing to the outside world sooner.

Sentence lengths have ballooned over the past few decades, driving the mass incarceration crisis. To counter the systemic damage of four decades of retributive criminal justice, we have to give incarcerated learners more than degrees — we have to give more of them a chance to apply what they have learned to life on the outside.

Expanding earned time credit programs, and other opportunities for accelerated release, also hold potential to ignite a broader conversation on how sentencing practices can recognize human potential for rehabilitation. Students who reenter society early with the support of high-quality education, equipped to succeed and to advocate for themselves, can begin to take down the myth that long sentences are necessary for public safety.

Skeptics question whether incarcerated learners should have access to free education, when there never seems to be enough to go around for even “rule followers.” But, one of the most important ways we can ensure the government can invest in programs that serve people on the outside, such as Pell, is to finally tackle the inconceivable amount of money we spend locking people up.

Prison education is an investment that pays off many times over, as incarcerated students discover their untapped potential, leave prison ready to contribute meaningfully to society, and build lives that keep them from winding up back behind bars. If we can lower prison spending, we can create a bigger pie that will better serve all students.

Most importantly, it’s a mistake to mark people in prison as categorically unworthy. Over the past several years, I have worked with incarcerated learners across the country; their stories are often heartbreaking, but their grit, dedication and thirst for opportunity are unparalleled. Many have spent their lives navigating the social injustices that make some far more likely to wind up behind bars than others, and are now saddled with such lengthy sentences that they worry they will never have the chance to do more.

We’re writing off an unacceptable amount of human potential if we define 2.2 million people by the worst thing they’ve ever done.

Arti Finn is the co-founder of American Prison Data Systems, a public benefits corporation working to promote free and ethical education options for incarcerated learners.