Keywords: prison education, college-in-prison
programs, mass incarceration, social justice
Expanding engineering education to the
incarcerated population
Timothy Bretl
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Why?
• The system of incarceration in the United
States needs reform.
• The mission of the Education Justice Project is
to create a model college-in-prison program
that demonstrates the positive impacts of
higher education upon incarcerated people,
their families, the communities from which
they come, and society as a whole.
A 10-minute video about this work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBPeftf74mI
When?
• (2006) Formation of a prison education working group at the
University of Illinois by Prof. Rebecca Ginsburg.
• (2008) Launch of the Education Justice Project.
• (2009) For-credit classes offered at Danville Correctional
Center, a medium-security adult male prison.
• (2013) For-credit engineering classes offered.
My contribution has included teaching two for-credit semesterlong courses, “Introduction to Robotics” (ECE470, Spring 2013,
enrollment 12) and “Aerospace Control Systems” (AE353, Spring
2016, enrollment 4) to men at Danville Correctional Center.
EJP has a rich history and offers many other programs:
http://www.educationjustice.net/
Where?
• All for-credit courses offered by the Education Justice Project
have so far been taught at the Danville Correctional Center, a
medium-security adult male prison that is 30 miles east of the
Urbana-Champaign campus.
• A strategic goal is to establish a degree-granting program,
offering a B.A. or B.S. from U. Illinois, for men at this prison.
What?
• The prison environment presents unique challenges:
– Class is limited to one evening every week for three hours.
– Students have no access to internet and cannot communicate with me (or
each other, in most cases) outside of class.
– Class may be cancelled or cut short at any time (shift rotation, hostage drill,
roll miscount, missing identity card, etc.).
– Students have access to a computer lab, but only three hours each week.
– No electronic materials can be brought in or out of the prison.
– Course materials must be cleared by prison staff two weeks before use.
– Educational background varies widely—for example, because many students
were incarcerated as teenagers—particularly in math and science.
– Conditions for students are often poor in prison—for example, overcrowding
is a problem—and may negatively impact academic work.
• These challenges force those involved with prison education to
work hard on teaching practice (to be creative and flexible, to be
patient and responsive to individual students, to be prepared, etc.)
with unusual care and intention.
Prognosis?
• Pell Grants to fund higher education are available again for incarcerated
men and women (after having been eliminated in 1994). It is a great time
to get involved in this work.
• Leadership and support is available from the Education Justice Project to
support efforts on other campuses to develop independent college-inprison programs.
• Help is needed to establish programs for successful re-entry of men and
women upon their release from prison (and, perhaps, their subsequent
enrollment at universities).
• Teaching in prison raises a number of questions about education and
society that may be worth discussing. Should engineering be taught in
prison? What is the responsibility of a public university to educate
incarcerated men and women? What is the purpose of engineering
education for those who may never be employed as engineers? Etc.