The Return of Prison Education in Virginia

Rich Meagher:

This is RVA’s Got Issues. I’m Rich Meagher. People leaving prison have so much stacked against them. These days we call these folks returning citizens, but it’s hard to actually be a citizen when you lack the things citizens have. Last week on this show, we talked about restoring the rights of returning citizens, but you also need skills and knowledge to be a full community member, to get a stable job, to avoid the life that led you into prison in the first place. That means you need an education. In Virginia, we do a lot of education in prison, but higher ed, not so much anymore. What happened and what’s being done now to bring it back? Today on our show: College In Prison. How do we make it work here in Virginia? That’s coming up on RVA’s Got Issues. I’m here with four people trying to make prison education happen in Virginia.

Terri Erwin is director of a coalition called the Virginia Consensus for Higher Education in Prison. Welcome, Terri.

Terri Erwin:

Thank you.

Rich Meagher:

Her colleague, Kenneth Hunter, is an organizer with a consensus and a returning citizen himself. Welcome, Ken.

Kenneth Hunter:

Thank you.

Rich Meagher:

Scott Richeson is Deputy Director of the Division of Programs Education Reentry for the Virginia Department of Corrections, or VADOC. Welcome, Scott.

Scott Richeson:

Thank you.

Rich Meagher:

And Zacc Allen is Chief Information Officer for the VADOC. Welcome, Zacc.

Zacc Allen:

Thank you.

Rich Meagher:

So let’s start, I wanted to turn back the clock a little bit. Prison education programs, higher ed at least, used to be pretty widespread in Virginia, but now they’re almost non-existent. Terri, what happened?

Terri Erwin:

So the 1994 Tough on Crime Bill made incarceration a disqualifying criterion for access to federal student funding. Early 1990s, we had about 1,200 college programs nationally run by about 800 colleges. By the end of the 1990s, after that Tough on Crime Bill was implemented, you had seven programs. <laugh> So-

Rich Meagher:

So 1,200 to 7. And so this is about these, uh, particular student, like, funding grants, essentially. They’re called Pell Grants, right?

Terri Erwin:

That’s exactly right. So the Pell Grant is a form of federal student aid that requires income qualifying. And this is not a student aid that is specifically focused on people who are incarcerated. This is actually available to all Americans who are of lower incomes. What changed was that being behind bars didn’t used to disqualify you. And so there were college programs in the prison and people were paying the way that they paid on the outside using that federal student aid. So now the incarcerated potential college students don’t have any money in their pockets to pay and colleges require tuition. And so the business model for students and colleges just broke down when that Pell Grant went away. And so now the challenge, the opportunity is to reestablish that relationship.

Rich Meagher:

Because Pell Grants are now, now you can get them, right? Eligibility requirements have changed.

Terri Erwin:

That’s right. In 2023, full acces to Pell Grants was reestablished for all folks, um, regardless of incarceration status. So we are off the block and running, but, you know, it takes a minute to get fully up to speed.

Rich Meagher:

And so is that the same thing from your perspective from the VADOC that it was these Pell grants that really have been driving this process?

Scott Richeson:

Yeah, but if I may address first, we have a lot of education-

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Richeson:

… that goes on. Our goal in the Department of Crisis is to provide as much education as we can. We want to prepare people, as you said in the opening, for productive law-abiding lives when they get out. That’s what we want. Um, most of the people we receive into prison, the largest groups are third and fourth grade reading levels. So we receive funding to have people in adult basic education. We are, uh, licensed by the Department of Education, like other school districts would be in Virginia. So I just want to make it clear we have a lot. We’re not funded as much as we would like to be. We have long waiting lists, um, but we do have a lot of career and technical and basic education for people. But in terms of college, we are not funded at all for college.

Once the Pell Grants went away, people could self-pay, which a lot of prisoners do not have money to pay, or they could receive a grant, which are not prevalent, but some of the schools will give it. So we were very excited when Pell came back.

Rich Meagher:

Because you folks in the DOC, right, you’re trying to meet the needs of your population, these career technical K-12 like GED kind of stuff.

Scott Richeson:

Correct.

Rich Meagher:

Um, but you still are seeking to try to do more if you can do more and that’s where we get to these higher education programs, right?

Scott Richeson:

Yes, correct.

Rich Meagher:

And so, um, ironically, it does seem like for some of these folks who are incarcerated, this is actually their best shot at getting education, right, because they don’t have the resources when they come out.

Kenneth Hunter:

Yeah, or the time.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Kenneth Hunter:

Um, when you, when you come home, um, you are immediately, um, be set with responsibilities that may not give you the time to go to a college or take advantage of a college program. I mean, I’ve said since I’ve been in, uh, involved with this particular issue is that the greatest resource people have in prison is time. They are literally a captive audience, no pun intended. And so during that time, you want them to be able to, um, basically use it to their advantage because it’s, it’s something that you quickly lose the moment that you walk out of a prison door.

Rich Meagher:

And so you have been incarcerated, Kenneth.

Kenneth Hunter:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

Um, w- what was your experience like trying to access education, higher education, uh, any kind of education while you were in prison?

Kenneth Hunter:

I entered prison in 1999 for a drug offense and I spent 22 years there. You know, DOC has a pretty tough task, but they are security oriented and that is the priority, keeping the public safe. And so, um, access to prison programming has a lot to do with your security level.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Kenneth Hunter:

Where you are, um, what, how much time you’re having out of your cell. Um, Red Onion or Wallens Ridge, which is the Supermax prisons, you have a, a l- a lot less opportunity to do the kind of things you would have at a lower level security. Um, so my experience was that I was at Notaway Correctional Center at one time when they had a college program while there was no Pell funding. I signed up, but then I got transferred to a lower level facility and they didn’t have college programs there. So I had very limited access. I had a GED before I entered into prison, so that was pretty much the cap and there’s nothing else to do <laugh>-

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Kenneth Hunter:

…um, beyond that. So I did various trades, um, none of which I ever applied for a job for, but it, I, I didn’t have anything else to do-

Rich Meagher:

Sure.

Kenneth Hunter:

… and I needed to beef up my resume to say I should be home. Um, so, um, they, there, there was educational offerings though, just kind of few and far between.

Rich Meagher:

So I wanna get to some of those obstacles in a minute, but first, I, I just wanna make sure that we’re clear about why it’s so important to have these higher education programs. Why do we need college in Virginia prisons?

Terri Erwin:

So 67% of the folks incarcerated in the Virginia Department of Corrections have completed a high school diploma or the GED. The question is what next? What, what can they do with that remaining time to prepare themselves to, to come home and to come home in a way that allows them to get the best job possible with the most modern skills, um, that are required in all of our jobs. So the opportunity, while folks are, are still behind bars to complete with that Pell Grant as much as four years of college, right, all the way through the baccalaureate is an amazing opportunity. And when you come home, Kenneth said it earlier, it’s, it’s more challenging and the Pell Grant requires that you be a person of very low income. So the second you get a decent job, you don’t qualify for Pell anymore.

Rich Meagher:

Right.

Terri Erwin:

So while you are still behind bars is probably for many people their best chance in their whole life that they will ever have to pursue and complete a college degree. But everyone across the country is figuring out, you know, after 30 years of slumber and loss of institutional memory in both corrections and in higher education, how do we do this? Which, and what should we do today?

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And that seems like what everyone here in the room is trying to do, right? Scott, you, you folks are, are, are members of Terri’s coalition, right? The DOC is, is a member.

Scott Richeson:

Correct.

Rich Meagher:

Um, so it, it does seem like everyone’s pulling in the same direction and is it just finding out what the details are? Does that sound right?

Scott Richeson:

Yeah. Well, you know, as Kenneth said, there’s so many issues to consider, but we do support as much college as we can get in the system. It has to be a system that works for the prison system. You can’t just take a community college and think it’s gonna operate as it does in the street in a prison. So there are a lot of considerations that have to go on to make it work.

Rich Meagher:

Right. It has to be college and in prison, right? It has to be designed for the facility and around some of the security concerns. Kenneth, you had talked about that earlier, right?

Kenneth Hunter:

I think that’s one of the complexities is that Pell funding and regulations require that these programs mirror the experience of folks on regular campuses out here. So while we can’t drop a college in the prison, we still have to find a way so that the col- college programs resembles as closely as possible the campus on the street.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And, and, and you don’t have to sell me the, the college professor guy on the importance of college, right? But it is difficult to do in a place that, you know, literally you don’t have the freedom to move around, right? And there are significant concerns. I, I do wanna get into some of those about the, the sort of obstacles and, and also the vision for how this might work. But before we do that, I just wanna confirm here, right? We’re talking about state prisons, right, not jails. So folks here in Richmond are familiar with the Richmond City Jail, but that’s operated by the city itself and we’re talking more about the state correctional facilities that you folks operate, right, Scott?

Scott Richeson:

That is correct. We have approximately 37 prisons across the state, but they’re all state operated. Um, to come to the Virginia Department of Corrections, you must have a felony that you cannot serve in a local jail.

Rich Meagher:

So what does it look like then? What could a college program in the correctional facility, how, how does it operate or how do you think it might operate?

Scott Richeson:

When Pell came out a few years ago, our superintendent sent a letter to all of the heads of colleges and universities inviting them to partner with us through the Pell Grants. We have increased our partnerships a lot. Right now, we’re up to 19 prisons having colleges through seven colleges and two universities currently. Some considerations are though that have to happen in prison is, you know, there’s so many, as Kenneth referred to, there’s so many things that go on in prison. We have medical services. We have to get people to mental healthcare. We have people that have substance abuse needs, treatment needs. We have religious services, we have families visiting. Of course, we have security, we have counts, we have movement considerations. Space is very limited in prison because when we built prisons, we, the taxpayers, we didn’t put extra money into prisons for space. So space is a big problem for us because we’re operating our K-12, um, during the days and sometimes in the evenings.

So space we have to plan around space also technology, which, you know, Mr. Allen, Zacc Allen can address is an issue.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And l- uh, this might be a good time to talk to Zacc. And, and Zacc, I have to say, you’re out of like IT central casting. You’ve got the, the lanyard and the khakis and the polo shirt, like you look like an IT person, no offense. I love IT people.

Zacc Allen:

I, I removed my pocket protector before I got here. <laugh>

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Scott Richeson:

<laugh>

Kenneth Hunter:

<laugh>

Terri Erwin:

<laugh>

Rich Meagher:

But there are, there have to be. The fact that you’re here, right, suggests to me that there are some significant technological challenges that have to be overcome to make this all work. What are some of those challenges?

Zacc Allen:

I can tell you that I’ve been with the agency going on 15 years and, uh, the attitude from our leadership in the agency regarding technology has shifted dramatically over 15 years. I think there’s a realization you really can’t function in today’s society without having a, a baseline of technical education. The problem with introducing technical services for inmates, you have to have an infrastructure that supports it. And we did not have that infrastructure. Prisons weren’t built for that. And so we took on the initiative to increase, um, our bandwidth at all of our prisons. So we’re going from 1.5 megabits per second at each facility, which is basically dial up to 100 megabits per second, which is a dramatic difference in our ability to offer technical services.

Rich Meagher:

And a lot of these prisons, uh, facilities are in, in rural areas too, right? Access is hard.

Zacc Allen:

Very rural areas, yes. And so a lot of times when we, when we go into these situations, we call it the last mile, right? It’s, it’s pulling the cable from the road to the building and sometimes you gotta dig trenches and it can be enormously expensive, tunes of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I can tell you today, um, we have expanded bandwidth at all of our prisons. There’s multiple phases to this project, but that was the first phase.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. I wanna get back to this in a minute, but Kenneth, you gave a ya-huh, uh, like kind of response to something Zacc said about technical education. Was that something from your experience or you just know that that’s what, what folks need?

Kenneth Hunter:

Um, yeah. I’m currently in contact with a lot of folks incarcerated some 25, 30 years who have never had a cell phone. Um, and we are so far into this, this, to this generation of technology that it’s hard of, it’s hard of us this picture. You know, you really just have to put yourself in the mindset of how much the world has shifted, how much culture has shifted. And so to, to, to Zacc’s point, I mean, that’s 100% spot on. There’s no way to put these men and women in a reasonable expectation of succeeding out here without some sort of access to technology.

Scott Richeson:

May I jump in on that?

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Richeson:

I just wanna say our, our vision is that technology can really solve a lot of our financial problems with funding education. If we could have a way to do our colleges with technology, then that solves a lot of our correctional officer problems, a lot of our space problems, access problems right there. So that is one goal we’re trying to work on, which Zacc and his team have helped tremendously with that.

Rich Meagher:

And, and you mean by that, like access to online school-

Scott Richeson:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

… classes to, to-

Scott Richeson:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

… to, to using virtual means of-

Scott Richeson:

Correct.

Rich Meagher:

… Uh, instruction because that, like for everybody else, opens up lots of access.

Scott Richeson:

But we have to have it secure. We can’t have people able to contact victims or able to handle other pursuits while they’re in there, you know, to contact people in the community or even commit crimes from behind walls. So we have to always have those considerations at the same time that we want them to have access to college.

Terri Erwin:

So I think that it’s worth mentioning that what we have heard from our colleagues and folks who are coming home from, from incarceration is that when they were behind bars, sometimes their professor was the first person to call them by their name in a really long time and that was important to them. And so I think that that kind of humanizing interaction is part of the secret sauce of education and, and you can learn facts on a laptop online, but there’s something more to education that, that helps people connect and develop analytical thinking, um, engage with other people. That kind of socialization is really important. Now, technology could expand that too.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Terri Erwin:

You could have, uh, synchronous education, like we, we, you can zoom a professor in, um, to a space. Shoot, you could zoom a professor into 10 prisons across the state. There’s lots of ways to do this. So we’re really excited that Department of Corrections has made this investment in expanding the technology kind of infrastructure, um, because now it becomes the moment to create something interesting and, and effective.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah, Scott, you wanted to say something there?

Scott Richeson:

Well, I really wanted to hop off of what Terri was saying about the human aspect. Um, one of the most, um, rewarding things I think I’ve ever done in my career is going to one of the graduations that happen in prison and we try hard and the college partner with, partners with us to have it simulate a graduation like in the street. You know, they wear the full regalia for graduation with the caps and they move the tassel. And a woman who was probably 50 when she came through shaking hands, she was crying and she said, “I have never accomplished anything before in my life that made my family proud.”

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Richeson:

And then once somebody achieves something, they can apply that to the next thing. They can go, “Well, I got this degree so I can be successful in my job. I can be successful staying crime free. I can be successful raising my kids.” So it’s so important to, uh, really build self-efficacy in people that they can change. So it’s not just the degree, it’s how they apply that degree in their life.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. It’s, it’s almost like the, all the statistics we see about how education can reduce recidivism-

Scott Richeson:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

… in, in an anecdote there about how that actually works.

Scott Richeson:

Yes.

Kenneth Hunter:

I wanna say something that’s probably, that I haven’t said is, that, that I think should be said.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Kenneth Hunter:

Visiting so many colleges and universities over the last year or so, it is profoundly obvious to me that corrections and education is not a match made in heaven.

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Kenneth Hunter:

And, and I, and I need to say that, not, not as an allegation against, uh, corrections, but more as a reality and that, you know, hopefully under new leadership, we’re seeing a shift in, in penal philosophy, but in general, the idea of corrections is punitive in its very nature. And it’s important that, that we say that because the, the environment that folks on, out in free society are educated in is completely different and for a lot of different reasons. And, and just like, uh, Scott Richeson just said, I just attended the graduation at Dillwyn, first college graduation full college and, uh, had a chance to speak and, and it was, it was lovely. It was lovely in terms of understanding what it meant to the nine graduates that were there, but it was not a college graduation in the free world.

It was, you know, it took hours to get in going through security. Um, families are subjected to this. It’s still the same security protocol. This is not something you go through when you’re attending a graduation for someone in there. So I just wanted to make it known that the part of the obstacle is that corrections was not designed, um, to be this educational hub.

Rich Meagher:

Right.

Kenneth Hunter:

And so it, it, it may, it, it, it represents kind of like a shift if, if we, if you want to do it effectively, you won’t be able to do it under the same auspices that corrections has been practiced under, at least in my opinion.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Richeson:

May I address that?

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Richeson:

I would just like to say I appreciate Kenneth’s perspective and I agree with it to some degree, but we do have a dual mission. We recognize that prisons that incarceration, you have to have security, you have to have safety. Getting in and out is a huge- takes forever and, you know, security is not convenient, just like getting on an airplane. It’s not convenient, but you do it for safety, you do it for security. But I do want to reiterate that we do, we believe very strongly in the Department of Corrections and our mission to help people be better. And so we do not see ourselves as there to incarcerate people. We’re there to help people be better, to get out to live a law abiding life. So, um, I do agree with the complexities, but our, our goal is not at all just to incarcerate people.

In fact, it’s the opposite. We work hard to use every single thing we can to help people to change.

Rich Meagher:

One other thing I wanted to ask about was transfers. I mean, Kenneth-

Scott Richeson:

Yeah.

Kenneth Hunter:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

you said you were transferred when you were trying to … And that does seem like a, a, a real challenge. And, and it doesn’t even necessarily seem like a bad thing for, uh, uh, someone who’s incarcerated to get transferred, right, because maybe they’re going to a, a, a lower security-

Kenneth Hunter:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

… place because they’ve been doing well-

Kenneth Hunter:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

… in the prison. So how does that work, the transfers and, and can college work for those kinds of programs?

Terri Erwin:

That’s actually one of the m- more complicating facts about, uh, life for, uh, people who are incarcerated. The colleges require continuity, um, in part and that’s connected to the Pell Grant itself. The federal regulations on the Pell Grant says that if a student leaves the class in the middle of the semester or past a certain date, past the withdrawal phase, then that money has to be returned because the student didn’t complete the class. And so the, the question is really around like how, how much notice is it possible to obtain because it puts the colleges on the line, uh, for that money if they can’t recover it from the person who is incarcerated. And I wanna just caveat that with saying like in some cases, right, that’s an involuntary transfer, it’s a security related issue, it must happen fast and it does happen fast. That’s a different situation.

And I, this is just part of, you know, the devil is so in the details of all of this work.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Scott Richeson:

But there are, as Terri and Kenneth both said, there are reasons people have to transfer. You know, medical reasons we gotta transfer quick, legal reasons, mental health reasons, security reasons. People go up and down, which they’ve earned and they deserve to do that. Now what we do do in our currently antiquated system is we can flag people. When they’re in college, we flag them and a flag pops up to our people that classify inmates and say, “Don’t transfer this person. They’re in college.” And we try to honor that. Sometimes if we close a prison, if we open a prison, if we have big shifts, then no matter what, um, people have to transfer sometimes. So I do think it’s something technology could help if we had some AI type of technology that really could look at all of our people and say, “Well, who can we move instead of this person?

How do we leave that person there?” I think that would help us. But again, that’s back to technology funding.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And is that part of the, the plan, Zacc, but you have to wait for, for additional funding for that kind of stuff?

Zacc Allen:

Well, it’s hard to have a technical conversation now without, without talking about AI. I mean, we’re already doing AI. It’s current, um, software companies we already work with and they’re upgrading and updating their products and it comes with artificial intelligence, but we also have rules and regulations that we have to follow when we go through artificial intelligence. So the most critical thing, especially in the work that we do, public safety, is you have to have a human in the middle. You cannot have artificial intelligence making decisions for you. You can have it help you, but ultimately the human has to make the decision. That was the centerpiece of our training. So AI’s coming, it’s already here at the Department of Corrections, um, and we, we’re gonna continue to expand as, as quickly as I can without introducing additional risk.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah, it br- brings us to this idea about next steps. And I know, um, there was recently legislation passed that established this, uh, governor’s task force-

Zacc Allen:

mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

… on education in correctional facilities. Um, and so what is next?

Terri Erwin:

We’ll meet again tomorrow, um, as part of a strategic planning process. The Virginia Consensus, um, is made up of the Virginia Department of Corrections, the Virginia Community College Systems, Virginia Works, uh, the Workforce Agency, SHEV, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. And so those are all the players who need to be at the table to figure s- some things out, right? This complicated mix. So we’ve been working since January in a collaborative strategic planning process to try to frame out and identify what are the questions that need to be addressed. Where do we see solutions emerging or models that we can adopt from other places? So I think there’s really good reason to be hopeful because all of our feet are moving. I don’t know. I, I come from the faith world. We say, when you pray, move your feet.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Terri Erwin:

And I, I think that’s us, right? When you’re hoping move your feet and all of our feet are moving, I feel hopeful. I feel, I feel movement in a way that maybe wasn’t there when even I first started in the work three, four years ago.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah, Scott, sounds, does that sound right? Your feet hurt too? <laugh>

Scott Richeson:

Yeah. Well, we’re going forward no matter what legislation does and we have continued to build the system ever since Pell Grants have come back. We’re at, you know, 19 prisons covered. Now we continue to grow a system. We have brought on a college coordinator and we have six other colleges that were currently in the stages of MOU discussion and development. So we’re gonna keep on working regardless, but I think the work is gonna be better through the coalition and through all these voices being together.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah, Kenneth, you gave a th- a thumbs up to Scott crosstable on, on the, the news about a, maybe a new memorandum. Uh, how about you? Are you hopeful here?

Kenneth Hunter:

Yeah, I don’t even have to be. I think my nod to DOC is that prison a- access to college programs is expanding and like, uh, Director Richeson said, uh, in spite of legislation, they are continuing to do it. I call folks out when I think I should and I also try to tip my hat when I think I should. And, and that is something I will tip my hat to DOC in these continuing efforts to expand access to college programs, that’s our mission. And so, uh, over the past, uh, couple years that the consensus has been working, we’ve watched it happen. So, um, you know, listen, the, the, the question will always be scale and we have to start somewhere.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Kenneth Hunter:

And we have all these competition about spaces and all these things and yet and still, um, the DOC is finding a way to, uh, add programs and add institutions. So I’m really proud of that and I, and I’m happy that so I don’t have to hope as much as I- uh, proof is in the pudding.

Rich Meagher:

Terri Erwin and Kenneth Hunter represent the Virginia Consensus for Higher Education in prison. Scott Richeson is a deputy director for the Virginia Department of Corrections and Zacc Allen is the VADOC’s CIO. Thanks, everyone.

Scott Richeson:

Thank you.

Zacc Allen:

Thank you.

Terri Erwin:

Thank you.

Kenneth Hunter:

Thank you.

Rich Meagher:

That’s our show. Thanks to our guests, Terri Erwin, Kenneth Hunter, Scott Richeson, and Zacc Allen. Tell us about your issues. Visit our website, RvasGotissues.vpm.org. Follow us on Instagram @RichGotissues or send us an email at [email protected]. Be sure to leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform. RVA’s Got Issues is produced by Max Wasserman and Rachel Dwyer. Script editing on this episode by Nicki Stein. Audio mixed by Steve Lack. Our theme music was composed by Alexander Hitchens. Shawn Freude is our executive producer. Steve Humble is VPM’s chief content officer. Rebekah Sausmikat is our key grip. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. Thanks for listening.