Prison Inmates Receive Transformation through Distance Learning
Prison inmates who work toward a college degree are more than half as likely to return to a life of crime.
In fact, of 43 inmates who earned their associates’s degrees through a specially-funded distance learning program, none have returned to prison according to the Hays Daily News in Kansas.
The power of education to transform lives is being tested in prisons across the country, as inmates take advantage of online degree programs and courses offered through interactive television.
Prison program offers college opportunities to inmates
By SEAN MURPHY
Associated Press Writer
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Having spent all of his adult life in prison, 28-year-old Roy Cardoso never had a chance to finish high school.
Charged as an adult in the 1994 slaying of an Altus man, Cardoso was just 15 when he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to more than 40 years in prison.
But this summer, Cardoso was able to obtain an associate’s degree in liberal arts from Rose State College through a program that uses interactive television to offer college-level courses to inmates in state prisons.
“It was a tough situation growing up in prison, but this program has given me an opportunity to better myself,” Cardoso said Monday through a video link from a classroom at the John Lilley Correctional Center in Boley.
Cardoso was one of six inmates who appeared in the teleconference with lawmakers, officials from Rose State and the Department of Corrections and representatives from AT nications company’s foundation on Monday awarded a $26,700 grant to the Midwest City-based college so that it can expand its distance-learning program to two more state prisons — Howard McLeod Correctional Center in Atoka and Joseph Harp Correctional Center in Lexington.
“We are excited to again partner with Rose State to provide the funding for a program that helps to open new doors for inmates and offer the opportunity for an education and a better way of life,” said Don Cain, president of AT money will fund distance-learning equipment like television monitors and video cameras that are linked via a fiber-optic network so that inmates can see and hear their instructors and ask questions.
“Having the face-to-face contact is second to none,” said inmate Thomas Curran, 26, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison on a first-degree manslaughter conviction. “We’re all blessed to have this program here, and we’re all better men because of it.”
The inmate program was started with a $23,000 grant in 2003 at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center and the Lexington Assessment and Reception Center. Since then, the John Lilley Correctional Center in Boley and James Crabtree Correctional Center in Helena have joined the program.
Rita Mendenhall, now a 27-year-old student at Rose State, credits the program with helping her earn an early parole from a 15-year sentence for several drug-related convictions.
“I believe the 37 college credit hours I completed while I was in (Mabel Bassett) showed the initiative that I needed to show that I would take responsibility for my own actions, to better myself,” Mendenhall said.
Providing educational opportunities to inmates is one way to help them break the cycle of criminal activity that often leads them to return to prison, she said.
“I believe it gives them the chance they need when they get out to support themselves and their families,” Mendenhall said. “That’s going to keep them from returning to the same lifestyles they were leading, which got them sent to prison in the first place.”
The average rate of recidivism for Oklahoma inmates is nearly 24 percent over the last three years, but for inmates who receive a high school equivalency degree, that rate is cut in half, said Owen Modeland, superintendent of schools for the Department of Corrections.
Fewer than one percent of inmates who participate in the distance-learning college courses return to prison, and of the 43 inmates who have successfully completed their associate’s degree through the program, none have returned to prison, Modeland said.
“Education doesn’t cost — it pays,” Modeland said. “If there is one way to keep recidivism down, it is through education.”
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