Prison Changes People, Education Changes Prisons
By Carly Berke
On Tuesday, November 19th, the Initiative on Cities hosted a comprehensive seminar on the power of education in prison systems, as it has proven to be one of the most effective ways to decrease crime and the financial and social costs of incarceration. Moreover, inmates who take part in education programs are less likely to return to prison and are better positioned to successfully reenter society and make positive impacts on their families and communities.
2.2 million people are incarcerated in the United States right now, contained within a system that is widely considered broken.
“When people look back at our era, what will they be shocked by?’” asked IOC Director Graham Wilson to open the panel. “In several years, people will look back at the conditions and the features of our prisons and ask how we could tolerate that situation and what sort of people we were that we did so.”
Mary Ellen Mastroilli, Faculty Director of the Boston University Prison Education Program, Associate Professor of the Practice, Criminal Justice, and Chair of Applied Social Sciences, began the seminar with an introduction to the Prison Education Program. The program was founded by Elizabeth Barker, a labor organizer, tenant activist, and untenured professor at BU in the ‘70s. She developed a G.E. Quiz Bowl for her students, a jeopardy-esque game played by inmates at Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk, a medium-security men’s prison. She thought that a match between her BU students and the inmates at MCI-Norfolk would be an interesting event, and it was — BU students lost.
She soon began championing for college courses in the prison, partnering with incoming president John Silber to get the a prison education program off the ground. In 1972, the BU Prison Education Program offered its first credit-earning course at MCI-Norfolk. In 1991 it extended to MCI-Framingham, MA’s secure correctional facility for women. Several colleges have also contributed courses to the prison education system, and inmates who accumulate these credits could apply them toward a Bachelor’s degree at BU.
From 1991-2017, the Prison Education Program enrolled 330 male graduates, 63 female graduates, 38 male graduates who started behind bars and completed on campus, and four female graduates who started behind bars and completed on campus. This past fall, BU introduced an 8-course, 32-credit undergraduate certificate in interdisciplinary studies, which currently has 19 students enrolled at MCI-Norfolk and 21 students enrolled at MCI-Framingham.
“Potential students feel less intimidated applying to a certificate program, and our hope that exposure to secondary education builds confidence and motivation to pursue additional studies,” said Mastroilli.
As of today, 50 students are enrolled in the liberal studies Bachelor’s degree program, and another 40 students are enrolled in the certificate program. Courses offered to inmates by the Prison Education System include human physiology, abnormal psychology, applied mathematics for personal finance, computer literacy, elementary statistics, contemporary history of Europe, introduction to comparative politics, and several more.
Mastrorilli has four hopes for the future. First off, she wants to see an expansion of postsecondary education in Massachusetts. As a member of the MA Prison Education Consortium, the BU Prison Education Program works with criminal justice agencies, government agencies, education institutions, and community-based organizations to leverage and coordinate resources for college readiness and tutoring, ease of credit transferability, continuity of education post-release, and career guidance. Tufts University, Emerson College, and Mount Wachusett Community College also offer degree-granting programs for incarcerated individuals. Mastrorilli would also like to see an ongoing evaluation of the BU Prison Education Program, as she argues prisoners, though human subjects, deserve to be studied and deserve to have their programs evaluated. She lastly wants to secure more grant funding and establish an academic reentry program for students who are released.
“Imprisonment is traumatic. Even if one serves a relatively short sentence, when incarcerated individuals are released they face challenges like employment discrimination, fractured families, and poverty, but they also experience terror in the form of PTSD,” said Mastrorilli. “A trauma informed re-entry program will bolster their chances for successful and productive lives.”
Next, Andre de Quadros, Professor of Music, Music Education, and Affiliate Faculty of the African American Studies Center, the Center for the Study of Asia, the Global Health Initiative, and the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies & Civilizations, introduced two of his colleagues who performed a dramatic reading of an excerpt of poetry from an inmate at MCI-Norfolk. De Quadros works with the Prison Education System under the umbrella of Music Appreciation to enable exposure to music, art, literature, and theater.
“We felt it was more appropriate for them to have a platform for the arts as a means of meaning-making, self-creating and a place for them to express where their lives are at,” said de Quadros. “We’ve been creating a subversive and rebellious space for people to express themselves.”
Their program uses the Empowering Song approach, which looks at how we create space for power, how power is conceived, and how the arts might be a locus for that power and powerlessness to be expressed.
He has taken several students from the College of Fine Arts into MCI-Norfolk and Framingham to work with students in the Prison Education Program to help CFA students discover new life and artmaking and gain exposure to a new set of life.
He shared some examples of the artwork produced by inmates with whom he has worked. One visual art piece he showed was made by an inmate in response to the annual reading of the list of prison-lifers who had died in the past year.
“This profound work draws attention to how we have been working to create spaces for individual power through the arts,” said de Quadros.
De Quadros has worked in prisons across 15 countries, after which he claims the criminal injustice in this country is one of – if not the worst – he has ever seen.
De Quadros then introduced Robert Iacovielle, a participant of the BU Prison Education Program who was recently released from MCI-Norfolk. Iacovielle opened with a poem he wrote when enrolled in the Prison Education Program.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m gonna lose my mind.
So I sit back, I go over my life, and I rewind.
I know that everybody in their own way has it hard.
Maybe it’s bad luck. Maybe it’s a curse.
But there’s always someone else that has it worse.
So I’m just going to have hope for my appeal.
Maybe I can get up, get a new trial, some type of deal.
But until then, I’m gonna keep my head up, and stay strong.
Go to college class.
‘Cause I know that this too, shall pass,” he recited in the concluding lines.
Iacovielle was charged with a life sentence in 2007. Overwhelmed with the concept of spending the rest of his life in prison, he knew he wanted to make a change in his life while incarcerated. He heard about Boston University’s Prison Education Program, but didn’t have the opportunity to enroll until he was transferred to MCI-Norfolk and admitted.
“When I was in Boston University’s Prison Education Program, it changed my life more than I can explain,” said Iacovielle.
His first class was with de Quadros, where he learned about Empowering Song. The classroom helped him feel less like an inmate and more like a student, enabling him to escape from his incarceration for a little while.
“For the first time in a long time, I actually felt like a human being,” said Iacovielle. “That classroom was filled with love and learning; it was humble and a safe environment.”
Through de Quadros’ class, Iacovielle found a way to reconcile the traumas of his past, conflicts with which he struggled on a deeper level than his physical incarceration. He learned to break the hierarchy of prison, in which prisoners dehumanize and oppress each other unknowingly. He was inspired to help other prisoners use education to empower themselves and overcome the emotional and mental barriers imposed by incarceration.
Iacovielle ultimately had his case overturned and received a new trial. He now wants to move forward in life as a public speaker and community organizer.
“I truly believe I’m standing here today because of education,” said Iacovielle. “It doesn’t just change your mind, it changes your heart, and at the end of the day, I want that for everybody. Everyone deserves that opportunity.”
Andrew Cannon, a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at BU, is involved in the Petey Greene Program and works as a tutor in the Prison Cells to Ph.D. program.
He reflected on the previous presentations by Mastroilli, de Quadros, and Iacovielle, after which he explained that he finds similar joy, satisfaction, and release in problem-solving and math.
Cannon was enrolled in a prison education program through Rutgers University while serving a sentence in New Jersey. He started with coursework in accounting, wiring, and fiber optics, and once he was transferred to a halfway house, he started taking classes at a community college. He began to realize that education is critical to fighting recidivism and would help him build a new life away from prison.
He says that his success is due in large part to counselors and mentors who helped him along the way while he completed his degree through community college. He had a very positive experience and is grateful for the help and support he received. He is also grateful for the generous financial aid available to students in his program.
After he finished his Bachelor’s degree, he started shopping around for Ph.D. programs that would enable him to combine his interests and work in renewable energy to some capacity. He found a great advisor at BU who was working in computational energy. He joined the Petey Greene Program at the end of his first semester at BU, and he explained that as he began to take on more responsibilities in his schedule, he learned how to balance his time and set priorities. He splits his time now between research, work, and volunteering.
Last to present was Maco L. Faniel, the National Program Manager of the Petey Greene Program, where he works along the eastern seaboard to recruit volunteers to support educational goals for incarcerated students in prison, jails, and detention centers. Faniel is an academically trained historian with a background in higher education, prison education, and secondary education career development and affirmative action counseling. He focuses on food security, health services, housing and homelessness, and urban and African history.
The Petey Greene Program, founded 11 years ago, is named after the late Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene, a radio talk show host and community activist. Greene served time in prison himself, where he worked as the prison’s disc jockey and became a role model for other incarcerated individuals. He would go on to become an advocate for the formerly incarcerated and work to restore civil rights of people with criminal records. The Petey Greene Program was founded in his honor to strengthen education services in schools and jails and support incarcerated students in their academic work.
The Program currently has about 1,000 volunteers working to support the educational goals of 1,000 incarcerated students. They work with over 45 facilities and 34 colleges and universities, with volunteers completing about 13,000 hours of support on an annual basis. The program operates in New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, D.C., and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Faniel started working with incarcerated individuals when he taught college courses for two years at five correctional institutions in New Jersey. He recently transitioned to Rhode Island, where he serves as the National Program Manager of the Petey Greene Program.
He emphasized his passion for helping those impacted by the criminal justice system and supporting education opportunities for incarcerated individuals. He also fights for civil and voting rights for incarcerated individuals, who are often not represented in their districts but added to the district where their respective correctional facility is located.
Are you a BU faculty member interested in teaching in the prison education program? Contact Professor Mary Ellen Mastrorilli. Are you a student looking to volunteer with the Petey Greene Program? Contact Stefanie Grossano, Regional Manager for Massachusetts.