Justice Education Series
Educational Access for Incarcerated Women
According to the Sentencing Project, as a result of new laws, tougher penalties, and “barriers to reentry that uniquely affect women,” since the 1980s, incarceration rates for women and girls have increased sevenfold. However, access to vocational and educational programs that assist incarcerated people and their families in living sustainable lives post incarceration hasn’t kept pace. This conversation among formerly incarcerated women and education administrators will help us to understand why and to learn how we can advocate for greater educational access for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women.
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Reentry and Education: A Policy Perspective
On February 23, 2022, speakers discussed the policy initiatives needed to expand educational access and ensure educational success for learners continuing or pursuing education post incarceration. Panelists conferred about policy initiatives like Banning the Box, standardization of educational programming, housing support, counseling, and financial aid, and helped us understand how we can advocate for policy change that supports an education continuum for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners.
Moderator: Pastor and former PGP student Erich Kussman
Panelists: Stephanie Bazell of the College and Community Fellowship, Syrita Steib of Operation Restoration, and Barbi Brown from the Tennessee Higher Education Prison Initiative
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Changing the System and Communities: How System-Impacted People are Pursuing Systemic Change
On December 2, 2021, we learned how system-impacted people, including formerly incarcerated people and children of currently and formerly incarcerated parents, are fighting to change carceral policies that impact them directly, and all of us indirectly. Panelists help us understand why it’s important for system-impacted people to lead movements for systemic change. They share how we can all join in their efforts on a range of issues, such as increasing access to education, ending solitary confinement, mitigating the harm of incarceration on children and families, and removing employment and voting restrictions.
Moderator: Maco L. Faniel
Panelists: Stanley Andrisse, MBA, PhD, Laura Harris, Charlese Horton, Alesha Monteiro, and Dominque Jones-Johnson, MSHRE
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What About the 30%? Education Before College in Prison
On October 20, 2021, a panel of scholars, practitioners, and system-impacted people examined how to increase access to high-quality education for pre-collegiate incarcerated learners. Panelists discuss the landscape of pre-collegiate education for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, help us understand what high-quality pre-collegiate education looks like, and how we can advocate for it.
Moderator: Maco L. Faniel
Panelists: Robert DeMarco, Kristi Webb, Jeffrey Abramowitz, J.D., and Sheila Meiman
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Defund, Decriminalize, & Abolish: What do They Really Mean?
As a result of grassroots movements against anti-black policing and other forms of state punishment, demands “Defund the Police,” “Decriminalize Marijuana,” and “Abolish Prisons” have risen to mainstream conversation and even political campaigns. But what do they all mean? On Wednesday, April 7, 2021, activists and writers helped us become more familiar with each of these movements, learn how they intersect, and how they might lead us toward a more just future.
Moderator: Maco L. Faniel
Panelists: Reginald Dwayne Betts, Victora Law, Dr. Elizabeth Hinton
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COVID-19 and Prison Education: A Student Perspective
On Thursday, March 11, 2021, recently released people, prison educators, and reentry organizations talked about how Covid-19 has impacted incarcerated people and the educational services they receive.
Panelists Nicole Guyette, Richard Gonzalez, Norma Dhanaraj, Allan Wachendorfer, and Michael Butler, along with Moderator, Anthony Landers help us to understand: (1) The spread of the virus in carceral facilities, (2) The shutdown of in-person programming, including education, (3) How we can advocate for incarcerated people, and (4) How we can provide alternative access to education during the pandemic.
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What Does it Mean to be a Justice-Oriented Citizen?
On Thursday, February 18, 2021 students, activists, and scholars discussed what it means to be a justice-oriented citizen during this moment of upheaval and reckoning.
Panelists addressed questions like (1) How have student-led social justice movements in the past operated, (2) What does a career in social justice look like, (3) what are the different pathways through which we can pursue systemic change, and (4) How do you join those directly impacted to end mass incarceration?
CHAVONTE WRIGHT
DARA WALKER Ph.D
AYANNA LYONS
Moderated by: Kayla Foster, UMD Petey Greene Program and Maco L. Faniel
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What is Educational Justice?
On June 2022, the PGP published a blog titled “Supporting the Freedom Dreams of Incarcerated Learners and Volunteer Tutors'' which argued that “access to high-quality educational programming and educational support for currently and formerly incarcerated learners are matters of justice… Because, as we have learned from the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated learners we serve, educational programming is one of the only services focused on their freedom dreams.”
During this webinar the following panelists continued this conversation: Ved Price - executive director for the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison, Rebecca Ginsburg - co-founder and current director of the Education Justice Project, William Freeman III - manager of Higher Education Justice Initiatives for the Education Trust, and Christina Dawkins - social justice consultant of A4Abolitionist.
These practitioners are engaged in the work of educational justice and they will help us think about and apply answers to these five broad questions: (1) What is educational injustice/justice? (2) What is the relationship between mass incarceration, the carceral state, and educational justice? (3) Why should prison education programs pursue education justice? (4) In what ways does high-quality educational programming support the freedom dreams of currently incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people? (5) What is the relationship between educational justice, reform, abolition, and freedom dreaming?
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The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration
On Thursday, February 9, 2023, @ 6 p.m. PGP hosted our first webinar of our Spring 2023 Justice Education Series, The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration. For the spring series, we are partnering with the Center for African American History and Culture at Virginia Union University.
As many of us have come to know, the United States is the global leader in incarceration, as each individual state confines more people than any other whole nation. We also know that of the 6.7 million people under correctional control (2.3 million in jails, prisons, and detention centers and another nearly 5 million on parole or probation), Black people are incarcerated at much higher rates than any other racial/ethnic group and are disproportionately represented in the carceral system compared to their population share. While we often leave our understanding of mass incarceration here, mass imprisonment harms families, too. This is especially the case for Black families and communities: in a 2021 study, 62.9% of Black respondents reported having an incarcerated family member.
During this webinar, our panelists helped us understand the policies and practices that have harmed Black families while also helping us grapple with the impact of mass incarceration on Black families and communities. While we learned about how incarceration produces income loss for families, pushes children into foster care, makes families vulnerable to housing insecurity, maintains or leads to over-policed communities, increases risk of incarceration to children of incarcerated parents, etc., our panelists also helped us understand how to advocate for policies and practices that restore Black families and Black communities.
We were thrilled to have Dr. Bahiyyah Muhammad as our moderator of this conversation. Our panelists included Chelsea Higgs Wise, Executive Director of Marijuana Justice, Dominque Jones-Johnson, Founder of Daughters Beyond Incarceration and Parenting from Prison, Josie Pickens, Program Director at the upEND Movement, and Region LaCour, Mentee at Daughters Beyond Incarceration.
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A Conversation with Dr. Treva Lindsey author of America, Goddam
As part of our theory of change, the PGP believes that we cannot discount anyone, and that everyone deserves access to education. But as we began discussing last spring, women and girls are left out of conversations about educational justice for currently and formerly incarcerated people, even though incarceration rates for women have increased sevenfold since the early 1980s. Black women and girls are especially treated as what education justice advocate Kimberly Haven calls correctional afterthoughts. This is the case, despite their disproportionate criminalization and incarceration in the United States.
In this webinar, we explored this exclusion by learning about how Black women and girls became societal afterthoughts and victims of domestic, carceral, and anti-Black violence. In conversation with Black feminist historian Dr. Treva B. Lindsey, author of America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, And The Struggle For Justice (2022), we grappled with the history of violence and criminalization of Black women and girls while also learning of their strivings for justice. PGP volunteer tutors, Virginia Union University, and the broader concerned community, ended this webinar with an expanded vision of educational justice by looking at the roots of injustice towards Black women and girls.
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Black College Students Confronting the Carceral State
When the PGP launched our HBCU Forward Initiative in 2021, we argued that our efforts to recruit, elevate, and support Black volunteer tutors were important because those most harmed by the criminal legal system, should be the ones leading efforts to change it. For this webinar we highlighted the educational justice work of four Black-led student organizations from three Historically Black Colleges. While many college students are aware of the system that funnels people from defunded schools and communities to incarceration, these student organizations are trying to do something about it.
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Art as Transformation and Justice in the Carceral System Confirmation
Art can serve as a powerful outlet for people navigating the criminal legal system, incarceration, or reentry. During this webinar, we explored how art can be a form of healing, liberation, humanity, and more. Join the Petey Greene Program and justice-impacted artists and advocates for a panel discussion on their experiences and work accompanied by an art showcase.
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Breaking Barriers: The Power of Fitness in Prison and Reentry
In celebration of our 2023 Annual 5K Run/Walk for Education Justice, Petey Greene Program trustee and Explorer CEO, Cason Crane speaks with Markelle "the Gazelle" Taylor of the documentary 26.2 to Life: The San Quentin Prison Marathon and Wylie Belasik of UliftU about the importance of physical fitness as a skill and outlet for people in prison and reentry.
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Unlocking Healthcare Equity Navigating Health Challenges
People in our prisons and jails are more likely to have complex medical challenges such as substance use disorders, mental health problems, diabetes, HIV, and other conditions. However, healthcare can be difficult to access in the carceral setting and when it is available, is often low-quality or confusing for patients to navigate. In this conversation, we spoke with individuals and organizations leading efforts to improve healthcare options for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and learned how we can better advocate for improved health outcomes for these vulnerable populations.
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LGBTQ+ Experiences and Identities in the Age of Mass Incarceration
LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented in our country's prisons and jails. In this Justice Education Series webinar, we spoke with justice-impacted people who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. They shared their experiences and offered advice on how we can become better allies and advocates in this space.
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Beyond the US: Incarceration and Educational Justice Across the World
The first webinar of the Petey Greene Program's Spring 2024 Justice Education Series was presented by the Puttkammer Center for Educational Justice and Equity. In "Beyond the US: Incarceration and Educational Justice Across the World," we took a global look at other countries’ carceral systems, discussed trends in incarceration and heard from organizations that foster educational justice across the world.
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Food for Thought Nutrition and Health in Correctional Facilities
In connection with our upcoming 3rd Annual 5K Run/Walk for Educational Justice, Jeffrey Abramowitz, Petey Greene Program CEO, and Leigh Owens, Education and Advocacy Director at the Pennsylvania Prison Society, discuss nutrition and health inside correctional spaces.
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Global Freedom Fellowship Series: Women & Mass Incarceration
In partnership with Incarceration Nations Network, we are thrilled to be kicking off the Petey Greene Program - Global Freedom Fellowship Series! Our first installment looked into the intersection of women and mass incarceration, featuring insights from panelists from across the globe.
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