Some of America’s ‘Most Terrific’ Students are Behind Bars

Posted On Oct 29, 2019 By admin With Comments Off

The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act has been in the news this transgression, as Democratic applicants for chairperson debate the pros and cons of a law which some accusation was a major operator of America’s mass incarceration crisis.

About one component of the law, which eliminated Pell awards that supported higher education programs in correctional equipment across the U.S ., however, there has been little debate about its impact. Thousands of inpatients lost the chance to gain the educational skills they needed to help them find employment after release–and to successfully navigate the travel back to civil society.

newsletter top A few strategies stepped in to crowd the educational void–most notably the Bard Prison Initiative( BPI ), founded in 1999 by undergraduates at Bard College in New York State, which supports college-level class for inmates in six mood confinements. As the momentum ripens for restoring Pell subsidies for incarcerated someones, a brand-new four-part PBS documentary by Ken Burns, College Behind Bars, examines the attainment of the BPI program.

The Crime Report’s Julia Pagnamenta recently spoke with Max Kenner, BPI’s founder, Jule Hall and Giovannie Hernandez, two BPI alumni featured in the film, as well as College Behind Bars chairman Lynn Novick and make Sarah Botstein about the ways in which the documentary contacts beyond the BPI program to examine the failures and paucities of the U.S. education system and the “moral argument” that has driven opposition to higher education in prisons, and eventually the merits of the case of a liberal arts education.

The conversation has been revised for gap and purity. College Behind Bars will air on neighbourhood PBS stations on Nov. 25 and Nov. 26 at 9/8 Central Time, and will be available for online streaming.

The Crime Report: Max, you say in the documentary that BPI students aren’t considered any differently than only if they are students on Bard’s central Annandale campus. Please elaborate.

Max Kenner: I think that as a college, we are in the market for superb students. We are in the market for people who are eager to take advantage of what we have to offer, and we are proactive in trying to find those people who are otherwise not engaged by systems of higher learning, or[ by] our colleges and universities in the United Country. It’s both rather obvious previously you think about it, and essentially tragic.[ It’s] miraculous, formerly you distinguish that last challenge, and take it on, that the first, and most obvious place to look for that wasted, disengaged flair in America is our sprawling, and unbelievably oversized prison system.

TCR: In the documentary, biology professor Mike Tibbetts says his students at BPI came with a “sense of urgency .” Did incarceration change your relationship to education?

Giovannie Hernandez, former BPI student: In my own experience, education prior to starting my BPI curriculum had always been something prescriptive. You were a passive receiver of information. You were made to memorize these things. You were just basically made to take these things for awarded. However, BPI supported you to question these things. It was not, “here take this information.” It was, “here what do you think about this information? ”

We were asked to process on our own terms. How we understood it, and sort of guide it in a way that really developed my ability to process , is not simply ideas, cured me understand myself and my prestige in the world much more clearly. The style I make decisions now, “its more” of a process. What is the worst thing that can happen? What is the best thing that can happen? What are the different ways that you can do this? That happens automatically now.

Jule Hall, onetime BPI student: The necessity came from the fact that we were adult learners, and we had been removed from the opportunities that education had supplied us, and then while we were incarcerated, we started to realign our values to the things that we wanted to aspire to, and we assured education as a tool for that.

Jule Hall

I would say that the road we committed the program was not with a sense of urging. We left that for Max[ Kenner] and the executives to be concerned with. Our urgency came from the idea that I want to absorb and learn as much as I can. This is something that is beneficial to me now in the present circumstance of being incarcerated, because it gives me a brand-new perspective on the nations of the world, and how I could impact the world. But also we had that awareness that in the future, we will be exhausted, and we wanted to be released in a manner productive for our families, as well as[ for] national societies we return to.

TCR: The political gossip around educational programs in prison has changed since BPI began in 1999. There’s an increase in bipartisan support for the grants, but a 2014 initiative by Gov. Andrew Cuomo for tax-payer money educational programs in prisons was accepted. Rivals claim it would offer those convicted of crimes with a free ride paid for by taxpayers. Why is there such moral anger?

Kenner: People who operated confinements, exponents, community members, and quite a few of victims’ liberties constitutions felt differently in the 1990 s and early 2000 s, than they supposed to do now. But there was still a general consensus of experts that college in prison, education in prison, was the best investment. So there was a disagreement in local communities that went on for quite a long time about how to answer the visceral[ opponent] you describe. It made a lot of effort to persuade our colleagues that the fact that this work is( a) inexpensive and( b) saves enormous amounts of fund in the future is actually unpersuasive.

College in prison at the time cost the Pell program about $35 million.( But) those individuals who offset that polemic advocated for a greenback which dedicated $10 billion to new prison creation. There was enough money in that bill to fund college for 200 times. So we couldn’t open college, but we could afford the new confinements that actually procreated things worse. The vast majority of people who didn’t vote for the bill, or abstained objected to the low-pitched number of dollars dedicated to prison construction. $10 billion was not enough.

“The only course you can make real change is by persuading the public to think of parties in the criminal justice system as real people .”

[ Instead] we speculate the only space you can make real change in this issue is by persuading the general public to think of parties ensnared in the criminal justice system, beings ensnared in prisons and prisons, as real parties. As people who could be family members, or neighbors. The moral justification carried the day in the 1990 s, and it will carry the day today. People do not care about money in this context; and if they tell you they do, you should know you can’t believe them.

TCR: Which returns us to BPI’s funding. Most of it comes from private gives?

Kenner: Historically, that has been true. We are one of a very small handful of programs that came into being after the die of Pell, and we are generally privately funded. That is less true now.

TCR: Recently, there has been a call for increased scrutiny over the causes of private funding. What are your thoughts on this? Would BPI even exist if there had been adequate government funding for higher education programs in the criminal justice system?

Max Kenner

Kenner: There is no question that there are pros and cons to each. We couldn’t exist and raise money the practice we do if we weren’t proximate to New York City. It’s become easier to do in different places as asset difference has skyrocketed and there are more rich people. Anyone can make their own moral arbitration, value judgement about that. Over the long term, and at any magnitude, the only way to fund these public programs is through public assets. Full and total stop.

Now if you are me, you have more leveraging, “youve had” more verify, “youve had” more independence if you are raising private money. That is terrific. You don’t have to report to a parliament, or a voter, or anyone else. There are institutions that manipulate programs like Pell, either for profit or not-for profit institutions that render programs that don’t really take into full account the interest or aims of their students. That happens. But I exactly want to say that we are extremely elicited and very proud that for the first time in 25 times since the Crime Bill, there has been bipartisan legislation to restore Pell eligibility for incarcerated people that is due in large part to Senator Brian Schatz from Hawaii and Mike Lee from Utah.

Investing in Prison Education

We anticipate that it will become law in one form or another in the next year or year and a half, and that is a terrific thing for “the two countries “. The reality is, when education was eviscerated in our prison systems, the pretending that our Department of Amendment was about anything corrective or rehabilitative was washed away. If there is going to be hope and intent, or any positive appreciate in these places that we invest so many resources in, college is the place to start.

TCR: Giovannie, in the documentary you said, “I don’t believe in friends in prison, but I believe in friends in my cohort, ” implying a sense of unparalleled trust in your comrade BPI students.

Hernandez: Prison is a shared common struggle, and there is a certain fellowship that comes with that. My closest friends now are people I was formally incarcerated with, even out here, because those are the people who can understand me “the worlds largest”, and who I can understand[ the most ]. Beyond that, there is this other level: your BPI cohort. And that’s a struggle within a struggle. Like doing college is hard out here, doing college in prison is doubly hard. Not only that, but you really get to know beings within class, and outside of class. BPI is a community that supports itself. I actually so wishes my peers superseded, just as much as they want to see me succeed.

Jule Hall: I think it is also related to the fact that we were engaging in liberal arts. We were speaking( African-American crime writer) Walter Mosley, and some of these philosophers, and we were able to see ourselves in the works that we were reading, and understand ourselves through that learn, and that’s a process, of whoever takes that travel with you, you are going to build an affinity with. But there existed a technical vistum to it; it was so strict that we had to band together to help each other learn the material.

We studied in little study groups. We tutored each other. There were goes when Giovannie facilitated me with Algebra, or I might help him with a paper, so we were all aware that we were in similar situations. And just as Giovannie described, it has transferred out here because those same affairs have been maintained, if not acquired stronger.

TCR: In the documentary, Jule, you mention that you were interested in studying German, because since World War II, Germany has been trying to amend for its” historic mistake .” What about Germany resonated with you?

Hall: Yes,[ before BPI] there was a reigning topic among the circles that I was a part of, of Germany as this racist civilization that perpetrated these atrocities. Nonetheless, when I got into BPI and I pictured a German periodical, it had a person of coloring on the include, and it was talking about hip-hop. And I was like, “Wow, wait a minute, this isn’t the German society that I generally hear about.” As I dove further, I witnessed that Germany made efforts to make itself a multi-cultural society. I’ve learned from my the studies and deciphers that Germany is one of the most commendable republics in “todays world”, and I only pointed out that fascinating considering its past.

And what was key to that for better or worse, because it wasn’t all a smooth road,[ is that] they actively worked to utter culture better. They recognized that something happened that was wrong. How do we make amends for that? I only find that so interesting in an American context, of course, with slavery, and the ways we are moving on, but we are never acknowledging that something went wrong. How can we make amends for that?

TCR: Students these days–like their professors–rely increasingly on digital fabric and resources to conduct their study. But due to prison contexts, BPI students is not ever providing access to computers or the internet. You had to rely only on notebooks and physical archives. Jule, when you were writing your thesis, how did you steer all your research needs?

Hall: The movie hired with this as well. The technological mediums that are provided in academies today are sort of a prop. But we had to go the old-fashioned way. Look at the back of the book; ascertain what interests us; find a footnote that it related to[ and] make sure that it was related to what we wanted. I also want to say that it required a bit of innovation , is not simply on our component, but of the executives. We had to test and try things in order to move things operate, and I think that is what is so instructive, because that is what education is about. It’s about not just taking a ordinary superhighway to achieve something, but exerting your head.

Access to Textbooks

In the early stages, I would[ invite] any prof, “Would you happen to have access to this book or that book? ” But what the hell is did eventually as things became more organic and whole in the program, we actually had parties on the campus–and I want to say the campus was so supportive of us–[ where] that was their duty. We would send them a directory of volumes. And they would pull the books out for us from the campus.

TCR: Upon news of your impending freeing, Jule is filmed saying “I better brush up on my German.” At first the comment comes off as funny, since German language sciences aren’t the first thing that comes to mind as a practical requisite to life post-incarceration. However, it tapped into a larger theme at the core of BPI. How has what you learned at BPI resonated in your lives post-incarceration?

Hernandez: What Max calls the ability to think has mapped out my path since I have been home. It has helped me reacclimate to culture. I’ve had an easier day than someone who might not have gone through BPI , is not simply because I am[ more] employable, but because I can identify certain things like distres where reference is pass.[ I can] be like, All claim this does not constitute a normal response, something is going on here. I can identify and think through that. In my professional life, having a degree…that’s gold out here.

TCR: What did you major in?

Hernandez: Literature. I should have majored in the social sciences. I am a occurrence director now for a non-profit. And being able to think through things, being able to identify what my clients need, how they are necessary me to show up in this interaction, that’s really on your paw. You never know how a person is going to show up, and how you have to adapt to that. So that, in a really real way, is how my education–having cultivated that ability to think quickly, to think critically–plays into my daily life.

Hall: It’s amazing how the universe operates, because when I wrote my major activity there were three themes that I hired[ with ]: race, wives, and the intersections of culture and migration. And it’s so ironic now that I am working for the Ford Foundation where those are the three routes of undertaking that my crew hires with. We engage with decarceration, trying to reduce mass incarceration, immigrant claims, as well as advancing gender reproductive right, and I would have never thought that. I think it’s very important to emphasize that because we–I feel I can speak for my classmates–engaged in this material with a genuine interest, and not inevitably since we are mulled this is going to be what I am going to do when I get out.

In fact, I think we had exchanges about that.[ People said] I don’t know whether this is going to help me with when I get out, but it’s so interesting, and I exactly desire involving with it.

A Guest Lecture Ignited the Idea

TCR: Lynn and Sarah, as the film’s director and creator, what obligated you to create a film on BPI?

Lynn Novick

Lynn Novick, Director: We got asked to give a client chide in a BPI classroom, at Eastern Correctional Facility in 2012. We went into this classroom to show situations from our Prohibition film and talk about that story with exactly your average, ordinary BPI class. We didn’t know what that would be, and it was the most interesting, involved, profound, serious exchange we had about our movie, about Prohibition anywhere. As we were leaving, we were really impressed, and sort of astonished by the level of academic rigor about the conversation we had just had, and where it was happening, and realized that we had no idea that that existed. We sort of said to each other, Wow this would be an amazing film, but we are kind of busy. And then over go, we just decided that we just really had to establish the movie. I taught in the programme myself.

Sarah Botstein, Producer: One of the worries we had early on, and one of the challenges we faced was that we had never made a verite film together where the drama is uncovering as you are shooting. The visual scenery is the same. So every time you go[ there] you annoy, “how is this visually going to sustain an gathering over meter? ” And we found that not only were our cinematographers amazing at catch both the sameness and the difference, but actually that frisked ultimately to a persuasivenes in the film rather than a weakness. We didn’t understand that when we started.

TCR: You filmed in medium and maximum protection confinements in New York State. Did you have any trouble getting the correctional administration to grant you so much access to the facilities?

Novick: We had very unusual access, and we ever want to point that out, because that is partly what realizes the cinema so unique. That approval had to come from the top of the New York State government. So on some tier it was the governor’s office and the Department of Amendment, and then in each facility it had to be interpreted and dealt with, and that was a little bit more nuanced.

“Education is an essential component of helping people through their captivity .”

But the Department of Chastening and the New York State government all understand very well that education is an essential component of helping people right through their incarceration in a beneficial nature. And they recognize that BPI is such an extraordinary program. They actually supported the idea of a movie that they are able to show that.

TCR: College Behind Bars will expose BPI to a larger audience, to onlookers who may not have known it existed or realise the full extent of its educational programs. What plan outcomes do you hope this documentary derives?

Kenner: The thing we hope it does most of all, and this was fundamental to the decision to make this documentary in the start, wasn’t about policy change, though we hope it moves the needle on Pell. It isn’t about fundraising, though we hope that more people that know about us find our creation petitioning and maybe reinforce us at one point or another. We rely on private contributions. That’s not what inspired us to do this. What motivated us to do this is the cynicism even of many of our best and well-intentioned contributors in government, in generosity, even in higher education. The cynicism of the capacity of our students. The rank of expected accomplishment, and the hilarity with which they go about their learning, demanded to be documented.

I can walk into a humanitarian foot and talk all day about how well our students do,[ but] nobody conceives how well they actually do until they see it for themselves. They have an idea in their intellects of someone doing something mediocre and that’s just fine, and that’s a good exploit of money. That’s not what happens. BPI students achieve things in undergraduate classrooms at the same level as any college in the United Position. That says an enormous amount about not only what a trash our penitentiary system are, and can be, but too how we disperse education the resources available to the United Nation. And the disbelief and dismis with which we treat young people from communities of color, but likewise across the board. When it comes to education the high expectations and ignore with which we treat young people in the United District is an outrage.

There are two things I love most when I watch this documentary. The first is to think about all the ways incarcerated parties are generally represented on broadcast television. Just how remorseless, and crafty, and superfluous those images are, and watching this film in the purposes of the that regular is an amazing thing. Second thing I love to do when I watch this movie is, everyone is going to assume that the filmmakers picked the brightest, most articulate, most good face characters, just like social scientists and donors always think we just skim the best.

When I look at their[ Novick and Botstein’s] film, I adore gazing in those classrooms, at all the people who aren’t major reputations, knowing how curious and grandiose, and articulate and magnanimous, all of them are. We could have picked two or three more throws who had allegedly been just as good as the group in the movie , not over the twenty years of doing the task,[ but] at the moment the movie was being produced.

Novick: As it happens when we started the film[ in 2014 ], this didn’t definitely sounds like a breast and middle question, and now it’s much more in our national conversation, and that’s really exciting. The cinema can help maybe inform the conversation at the minimum, and drive citizens to ask, “Why don’t we have more[ education programs] in a facility or in a state? ” Just questioning our public officials about what they are doing.

That’s a good start. Our lead institutions of higher learning that have gargantuan endowments–what are they do with all that money, and who are they educating? Who are they deeming are worth their intellectual gifts? Those are big questions.

TCR: When the BPI debate team earned against Harvard in 2015, it acquired international headlines. The documentary demo a few headlines and clips, however, that turned Harvard’s loss against BPI into a joke, solidifying this narrative of underestimation that the general public has of incarcerated parties.

Kenner: When that happened there was enormous, world fanfare, and there was very little pushback of[ the nature] you were alluding to before, and that stunned me. In this area, we have a history of being afraid of our own pall a little. It educated me something about how we think about these issues in the United States.

One of the first things you learn is how much people like to see Harvard lose. That was real, and you can’t talk about it without note, but too speaking about mistrust, how normally in the United District when we were discussing increasing educational access or opening, peculiarly when we talk about doing it for free, the thing that people hear in their thinkers is that we are providing some kind of handout, or that we are lowering standards to provide something for people that they haven’t earned. And the symbolism of defeating in an objectively judged debate the most prestigious, and prominent, and elite university in the United Commonwealth, signals to parties implicitly that this was not a handout, that the education was real, and the accomplishments were sincere, and therefore in that context, that kind of resentment softened apart. It was a terrific lesson.

Botstein:[ After the Harvard debate] I left with the Harvard adolescents because we wanted to interview them outside of prison. I was searching for my phone to say, “They acquired, they triumphed! ” And then I recollect talking to Max[ Kenner ], like what is going to happen? And then the whole world exploded, so “hes just” certainly an adventure in the process of spawning the film. And then we actually had to make sure we didn’t tip-off the scale too much. That the debate is really a great part of BPI, but what happens on the classroom is actually the backbone of what happens at BPI. You don’t want to overdo it, like BPI is a college with a great debate team. BPI is a great college, and like other enormous colleges it has a debate team. Just like it has an alumni party, just like it has a play. And that’s an important distinction.

TCR: In the documentary, one of the BPI professors, who too learns at the primary Bard campus, Donna Ford Grover, says of BPI students, “It’s like teach graduate students.”

Kenner: Sure, beings are grownups.

TCR: It is not just that they are grownups. BPI students also come in with a different regulate of knowledge.

Max Kenner: I envision the reason we get such terrific faculty, and why so many wonderful teachers and professors was intended to educate for us, is because they recognize instant when they are in one of our classrooms, how much is at stake for our students. Students imparting a sense of seriousnes, and hope, and intention and emptines, to those classrooms that[ module] are unaccustomed to, and that is absolutely riveting and marvelous if you as a faculty member, if you as an academic or professor, also think so much is at stake.

Julia Pagnamenta is a contributing writer at The Crime Report. She accepts notes from readers.