JFF's Center for Justice & Economic Advancement is hiring!

We are looking for a full-time, fully remote Manager, Fair Chance Initiatives to join our team. 

This role will offer the chance to collaborate on a new initiative that will bring CJEA’s three impact areas – Talent Development, Employer Change, and Policy & Systems Change – together in a place to help stakeholders in a set of states to build strong fair chance ecosystems. The Manager will coordinate and manage projects that support the implementation of this comprehensive strategy in the identified states. You can read the full position description here.

Our CJEA team is deeply committed to creating opportunities for those who are currently incarcerated. This opportunity is open to incarcerated applicants with the necessary access to participate in remote work/virtual meetings. While we recognize that most currently incarcerated students/prospective applicants do not have the necessary access to participate in remote work, we aim to continue creating opportunities that exemplify the value created for all stakeholders when we extend remote work and work/learning opportunities to those who are still incarcerated and ensure that they are fairly compensated for that work. 

The hiring range for this role is $68,000 - $85,000 annually, in alignment to JFF’s Manager salary band and our compensation philosophy. 

Applications are due by June 5 at 5pm ET. 

Please share this opportunity with your networks and with anyone whom you feel might be interested!

With support from the Ascendium Education Group and the Ichigo Foundation, Jobs for the Future’s Center for Justice & Economic Advancement is excited to launch the Normalizing Education Collective (the Collective), a year-long community of practice designed to support non-profit postsecondary institutions nationwide as they explore building or expanding high-quality postsecondary pathways in prison that lead to opportunities for economic advancement.  

Through this national collective, JFF will focus on facilitating connections and collaboration that enable sharing of best practices. We will provide access to crucial tools and resources through JFF’s Normalizing Education Resource Center and the Resource Community for Higher Education in Prison (RCHEP) online learning platform that help strengthen the capacity of our institutional partners leading this important work. All community of practice members will have access to a monthly newsletter elevating critical resources, quarterly workshops on key challenges and solutions faced by leaders in this space, and peer learning, problem-solving, and mentorship through the Collective’s hub. 

If you would like to learn more and be engaged in the Normalizing Education Collective, please complete this Interest Form signaling your desire to join.  

We are also excited to invite you to the official launch event for the Collective on May 15 from 12-2 p.m. ET. Specific details will be shared with all who complete the Interest Form, providing your preferred communication method. 

Please send any questions you may have to NormalizingEducationCollective3485@jff.org. 

We look forward to seeing you at the inaugural convening on May 15!

Hi everyone!

I was wondering if anyone had any experience paying individuals who participate in research projects, in the form of honorariums, while they are incarcerated? Our organization has never used JPAY and it seems to be one of the only options available. We could always provide a gift card, mail a check or send payment to someone else who could then deposit it in their accounts, but this doesn't seem accessible to all individuals and not sure a check would be accepted by the department of corrections and pretty sure gift cards are a no. Any guidance would be appreciated and would help me provide information to our organization on the need for JPAY option..

Thanks!

Tammy

While surfing around for resource tools, I stumbled upon this fantastic website called Next Gen Personal Finance, an org site dedicated to providing information and edutainment to raise awareness about financial struggle, support financial wellness, and provide methods to build personal wealth.

Next Gen Personal Finance (ngpf.org)

These games were so interesting, exciting, and informative that I just had to share them. Although I do highly recommend the build your stax game, the purpose of this post is to share the game by Urban Ministries of Durham called SPENT: SPENT (playspent.org) and I'd like to challenge all who read this post, not only to play, but to recommend this digital choose your own adventure game to at least 1 person you know. SPENT is a decision-based game illustrating the difficulty of trying to survive through channels of unskilled labor in the U.S. and how lack of financial resources affects every aspect of our quality of life.

I hope you all enjoy this game as much as I did and continue to share to support causes to promote financial education programs that help us break cycles of socioeconomic oppression and poverty.

Reentry and Chances

Second Chance Month has noble aims, and in many ways has strived to address the collateral consequences that extend long beyond a person’s release from incarceration.

A primary goal of Second Chance Month is to raise awareness on the challenges that individuals face when reentering society after incarceration, and to provide interventions that will enhance the likelihood of successful reentry. Contemplating these challenges, the scarcity of opportunities to adequately prepare for reentry during incarceration comes to mind. The impact and aspirations of Second Chance Month are undermined when people are released from prison with pennies, after being forced to perform unpaid or slave-wage labor for years on end. 

Being released with a negligible amount of money doesn’t sound like a “second chance.” In fact, it doesn’t sound like a chance at all. If individuals were paid fair wages for their work during incarceration and were able to return to their community with that money, their reentry phase might feel more like a “chance”. As the Second Chance Month proclamation seeks to live up to its ideals or claims regarding reentry, I’d like to see people being released from prison with the financial and material resources necessary for a successful reentry.

Higher Education in Prison

With Pell Reinstatement, we expect an expansion of access to opportunities for incarcerated individuals to obtain a college level education. Yet they will not use that education to further their professional goals until their release. This means we have highly educated and able individuals, with an education funded by the federal government, who are not allowed to fully contribute to the workforce and then are being released with no money… These people are then expected to feel like they have a “chance.”

A Solution

Now that COVID has basically standardized remote work, we must reassess the feasibility of remote employment and careers for people who are incarcerated. In many respects, this could provide people with a genuine chance upon release, given that nationally there’s about a 70% “chance” that person will be rearrested within 5 years of their release (Alper et al., 2018).

We know that employing someone who is currently incarcerated is possible and that these employees can provide immense value. The Alliance for Higher Education in Prison, Jobs for the Future, and Unlocked Labs have benefited from employing incarcerated people with competitive wages.

Children and Generational Considerations

I can’t think about Second Chance Month without also considering first chances. Children of incarcerated parents are significantly squeezed of even having a first chance. One of the most significant consequences that a child of an incarcerated parent faces is a diminished economic wellbeing (Travis, J., & Waul, M. 2017). Children should not have to suffer the strain of their parent not being allowed to provide financial support to them. More disturbingly, children who have an incarcerated parent are six times more likely to become incarcerated themselves. 

A Solution

Enabling incarcerated parents to work and provide financial support to their children could help alleviate the cycle of generational incarceration and generational poverty. By addressing a root issue like this, which is directly related to the child’s first chance, we can move one step closer to NOT needing a Second Chance Month.

Final Thoughts

About 70 million people in the U.S. have a criminal record… that’s a little over ⅕ of the American population, which is 1 in every 3 people (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2023). At the rates that people are being arrested, in 20 years the U.S. could easily see 35 - 40% of its population with criminal record. If we are going to look at second chances, as a nation, we’ll need to make some serious criminal legal reforms to alleviate the collateral consequences of having a criminal record, because more and more people are becoming disenfranchised, by what seems like the millisecond.

Overall, Second Chance Month is focused more on triaging the harms caused by a flawed criminal legal system than it is with the interventions that would prevent one from going into the system in the first place. If we are going to have a Second Chance Month, I think a First Chance Month seems appropriate as well. For millions of people (especially those living in poverty), barriers to first chances are just as hard to overcome as the barriers associated with second chances. 

A society’s commitment to second chances, reveals much about its first. Second Chance Month is a reminder that we need to do better at making sure there's a first chance. 

References

Alper, M., Durose, M. R., & Markman, J. (2018). 2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-up Period (2005-2014). Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/18upr9yfup0514.pdf 

National Conference of State Legislatures. (2023). Criminal Records and Reentry Toolkit. https://www.ncsl.org/civil-and-criminal-justice/criminal-records-and-reentry-toolkit 

Travis, J., & Waul, M. (2017). The Hidden Consequences: The Impact of Incarceration on Dependent Children. National Institute of Justice. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/250349.pdf 

Hi everyone,

I am a PhD student in Computer Science at UC San Diego, and my research focus is improving computer science higher education in prisons. I recently published a research report at a computing education research conference (ACM SIGCSE), which I wanted to share here to get feedback from the HEP community and connect with others doing similar work. 

Here is the abstract:

Efforts to bring incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals into the field of computing stand to improve equitable access to both computing jobs, and consequently the benefits of our tools and innovations through the inclusion of more diverse perspectives. This report describes the design and execution of a college level introductory computing course conducted with 26 students currently incarcerated at a prison in the United States in Fall 2022. We discuss the ways that the prison environment and the student body differ from traditional college computing classes, and how this impacted the design and execution of the course. We found that despite significant environmental barriers to learning to program, such as not having access to a code interpreter, there were unique affordances of the student population, including maturity and community, that could be leveraged in the course design and policies. We conclude with many lessons learned for the purpose of improving future offerings of computing courses in prisons.

You can find more information about my work and my contact information on my website. Thanks!

Date: May 17, 2024

Time: 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

Location: University of Southern Maine (USM), Portland, Maine

More information and registration to follow. 

Reentry Sisters, the National Council, Women Transcending, and the Opportunity Scholars, with the generous support of the Bingham Project at USM, offer a forum by justice-impacted women to strategize; share resources; and create action plans for legislative change, the use of clemency laws and early release, reentry services for women, and ending the incarceration of women and girls.

We invite activists, advocates, and allies to join us for an immersive and interdisciplinary approach that brings together leaders from across multiple states to end mass incarceration for women and girls.

Featured Speakers

CHARLOTTE WARREN

Former Maine State Representative, former Mayor of Hallowell, Maine, and owner of C Warren Consulting

STACEY BORDEN

Executive Director, New Beginnings Reentry Services, Boston, MA

KRISTIE PUCKETT

Gender and Racial Justice Policy Expert, Senior Project Manager at Forward Justice, Raleigh, NC

JAYNA ASHAF

Field organizer, National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls

(Joined by Sashi James and Mallory Hanora)

Questions? Please email Skye Adams at skye.adams@maine.edu.

Please feel free to forward this to anyone who may be interested.

Breaking Barriers: Bridging Worlds in Prison Education and Student Advising

From June 14-16, 2024, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) is hosting a unique convening focused on policies, techniques, and practices for providing the full suite of advising services for students who are incarcerated. prison education programs (PEPs) need to ensure they are operating in the "best interest of the students" per the regulations, in order to retain their right to administer financial aid. Equitable high-quality advising plays a major role in this. But questions exist about the types of advising, methods for doing this advising, and supporting materials to use while advising. This convening will blend national experts in the various advising disciplines and practitioners who are committed to implementing PEPs in a compliant and student-centered manner. There is an application process to attend this conference. There are no registration fees, and there is financial support to offset costs of attending. Each program selected will send a leader in financial aid and a leader in PEP administration. Below is a link to the convening announcement and to the application. The application should be completed by April 15, 2024. 

This work is generously funded by a grant from Ascendium Education Group. 

https://www.nasfaa.org/pep_event

Feel free to send any questions to pep@nasfaa.org!

UPDATE: Please note new dates for session 3 below.

Rockwood Leadership Institute, in partnership with Ascendium, is excited to announce that applications for the new Fellowship for Leaders in Higher Education in Prison (HEP) are now open! Full tuition and accommodations will be covered by Rockwood and fellows will receive a $5,000 stipend for completing the fellowship, along with $4,000 in training-related expense reimbursements.

Apply for the 2024 Fellowship for Leaders in Higher Education in Prison now! Read more about how to apply and what to expect in the application.

This brand new exclusive Fellowship, designed by Rockwood staff, trainers, and system-impacted consultants, is designed to strengthen and cohere a core group of formerly incarcerated leaders working in Higher Ed in Prison organizations. For all the details, including the Fellowship programming and timeline, purpose, goals, and more, see our Fellowship Fact Sheet.

Cohort Selection Criteria:

This Fellowship is for formerly incarcerated leaders in the Higher Ed in Prison field. Leaders currently working in non-profit HEP organizations, at Universities and colleges, in government agencies, foundations, state coalitions, etc. are all welcome to apply.

This training is limited to 24 participants who:

• Are formerly incarcerated leaders or decision makers in the Higher Education in Prison field, preferably those with Higher Education programming experience while incarcerated;

• Demonstrate personal/professional readiness to step out of their comfort zone and learn new leadership skills;

• Contribute to creating a cohort that is diverse in terms of demographics (such as race, gender identity, and sexual orientation), geography, lived experiences, and organizational strategy;

• Commit to full participation in the year-long fellowship, including three in-person retreats, completing any required pre-session work and post-session evaluations.

Fellowship Sessions:

• Session 1: September 30 - October 4, 2024 | Location TBA

• Session 2: December 9-13, 2024 | Island Palms, San Diego, CA

• NEW DATE! Session 3: April 28-May 2, 2025 | Location TBA

Fellows must be able to attend all three in-person sessions in order to participate.

Additional Program Offerings

• Two virtual Community Calls will support participants’ relationship building and learning outside of the structured training session time. 

• Two virtual Webinars will support participants in learning concrete skills.

• Individual professional coaching. Each participant will have access to up to four free coaching sessions ​​with a Rockwood trainer during the program. 

Applications will close April 22 and select applicants will be invited to interview in May. Please share this new opportunity with any colleagues or friends that meet the cohort selection criteria.

Questions? Email Andrea at andrea@rockwoodleadership.org. 

Women’s History Month began as a congressional joint resolution in 1981 and a presidential proclamation from Jimmy Carter to declare a week of celebratory observance for “American women of every race, class, and ethnic background whose roles and contributions had been consistently overlooked and undervalued in the body of American History.”  

Between 1978 and 2007 incarceration rates for women rose by 560% compared with the 240% increase of men. Although the population of men has always been larger than the population of women in carceral spaces, the alarmingly overlooked fact about carceral trends is that the incarceration of women has steadily outpaced the growth rates of men’s incarceration. (https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-criminol-030421-041559).

I first arrived at the Women’s Center of Maine Correctional Center (MCC) in 2018. As a woman serving an 11-year sentence, I began to inquire about post-secondary education programs almost immediately. During my intake classification, my caseworker even included my request to take college psychology classes as part of my case plan. However, months later, I learned that there were no matriculated or credit-bearing programs for the women of MCC. How could this be? The men had a college program; surely this must be a misunderstanding that could be cured with a simple conversation.

I met with the woman who was the unit manager of the Women’s Center at the time, hoping to receive permission to enroll in college, but the conversation was devastating. She told me that the Women’s Center didn’t have a degree program and that I would have to wait until I was transferred to the Southern Maine Women’s Reentry Center. The tears that welled up in my eyes made me feel childish. My cheeks burned when I asked her, “You want me to wait? What am I supposed to do for six years? Why can’t we start a program here for women like me?”

My story didn’t end there, and “no” will not be the final word for other incarcerated women who are denied access to education. My next steps carried me to advocacy meetings; I opened a dialogue with the unit’s mental health clinician so that she could document my struggle and help me cope until I found a solution; then, I put pen to paper and wrote to advocates, legislators, and central administration. I received a response from the Deputy Commissioner that pledged to establish post-secondary services for the women’s population with a promise to support my endeavor to pilot matriculation for women serving sentences exceeding four years. 

In 2019, I became the first woman in my facility to be enrolled in a degree program and in 2021, with the expansion of the university’s Prison Education Partnership and generous funding from the Mellon Foundation that was applied for with assistance from the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition to create the first Liberal Arts associate cohort for women.

I may have walked out of that office feeling defeated and alone but I wasn’t alone. There were more women like me - and there still are, all across the world - who want to invest their time and energy toward self-actualization, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

Title IX was passed in 1972 to prohibit sex discrimination in all educational programs that receive federal support, but sadly, incarcerated women continue to struggle against inequality in prison education spaces to this day, but despite this fact, many prisons and jails fail to offer program parity to female and gender-nonconforming prisoners in comparison to their male counterparts. A 2018 report by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition showed that men incarcerated in Texas had access to more than double the educational programming opportunities than were offered to women; this gender-based disparity in access to programs is a common phenomenon in prison systems. 

Alexa Garza, an accomplished scholar in a Texas women’s prison, worked hard to earn her degrees in a system that limited achievements for women, first obtaining two associates degrees before earning her baccalaureate. Similar to my experience, Alexa advocated for an equal chance to pursue success in an institution that already had long-established pathways for incarcerated men to earn advanced degrees. Today, Alexa is a justice fellow for the Education Trust and I am a fellow for the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison; we are but two examples of women who have successfully challenged gender-disparate access to education from behind prison walls, and if this is your story too, I invite you to share it with us.

Since I took my first steps in prison education, I have had the opportunity to take philosophy and web design courses with The Educational Justice Institute at MIT and have served as a teaching assistant with their programs for the last three years; I have been blessed to engage in a paid work-learning position as a fellow with the Alliance since last March, and have used my wages to pay taxes, support my family, and save for reentry; and at the conclusion of the Fall 2024 semester, I will be graduating from the University of Maine at Augusta with a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies. Never say never. Never give up.

Educational journeys are not isolated experiences and any student, especially those who are incarcerated and particularly women, cannot thrive without support and allyship. Women face unique barriers in prison education that limits their futures in professional spaces by depriving them of academic and vocational engagement, reinforcing gender stereotypes in programming, and failing to properly resource women’s facilities and units to be conducive to the achievement of marketable skills and credentials. In honor of Women’s History Month, let us dedicate our efforts to making the neglect of women’s educational needs a thing of the past.

Works Cited:

Heimer, K., Malone, S. E., & De Coster, S. (2023). Trends in women’s incarceration rates in US prisons and jails: A tale of inequalities. Annual Review of Criminology, 6(1), 85–106. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-criminol-030421-041559

Nittle, N., & Nittle, N. (2022, May 6). In Texas prisons, men have access to significantly more higher education programs than women. The 19th. https://19thnews.org/2022/05/texas-prison-higher-education-system-inequity/

The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, & Linder, J. D. (2018). An Unsupported Population: The Treatment of Women in Texas’ Criminal Justice System. https://www.texascjc.org/. Retrieved March 27, 2024, from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/tcjc/Womens_Report_Part_2.pdf

On Wednesday, March 27, from 2:00-3:15 p.m. ET, NASFAA (National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators) will host a free and publicly available webinar. See below for a description and links to register.

The Financials of Prison Education Programs

March 27, 2024, 2:00 PM ET | 75 minutes
Price: Free
Prison education programs (PEPs) and the institutions they are part of need to manage their financials, and there are a variety of ways they do this. The issues of affordability, cost management, and financial forecasting can be challenging. Defining the components of the Cost of Attendance (COA), including tuition, fees, and materials can be challenging. Programs need to balance legal jurisdictions, equity and fairness to students, and program sustainability. This needs to be done in the context of understanding the estimated financial aid anticipated to be available for each student. The panel on this webinar will include program leaders with experience in analyzing these questions.

The direct link for participants to register for The Financials of Prison Education Programs is:
https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/4519496/BB0A8AAE764D837E766429646803514D

Individuals may also register from the NASFAA website as well: 
https://www.nasfaa.org/prison_education_programs

This work is generously funded by a grant from Ascendium Education Group.

I am looking for participants to interview for my master's thesis project. 

Are you a formerly incarcerated person who identifies as a woman or femme? I would love to speak with you about your experience in prison/jail! If you know someone who may be interested, please share the flyer below with them. 

Each participant will receive a $50 digital gift card. 

Feel free to message with any questions or email me at mniness@udel.edu. Thank you for your help!

Rockwood Leadership Institute, in partnership with Ascendium, is proud to announce the 2024 Fellowship for Leaders in Higher Education in Prison for formerly incarcerated leaders!

This brand new, exclusive Fellowship, designed by Rockwood staff, trainers, and system-impacted consultants, is designed to strengthen and cohere a core group of formerly incarcerated leaders working in the HEP sector. The Fellowship will consist of three in-person weeklong sessions, individual professional coaching and peer coaching, and virtual Community Calls and webinars in between in-person sessions. For more information, see our Fellowship Fact Sheet.

Fellowship applications open April 1. All formerly incarcerated leaders and decision makers currently working in HEP organizations, including nonprofit organizations, government agencies, universities and colleges, foundations, etc., are welcome to apply. Applications will close April 22, and select applicants will be invited to interview in May. Please share this new opportunity with any colleagues or friends that meet the cohort selection criteria.

Full tuition, accommodations, and all meals during the residential retreats will be covered by Rockwood, and fellows will receive a $5,000 stipend for completing the fellowship, along with $4,000 in training-related expense reimbursements.

Fellowship Sessions:

• Session 1: September 30-October 4, 2024 | Location TBA

• Session 2: December 9-13, 2024 | Island Palms, San Diego, CA

• Session 3: April 7-11, 2025 | Location TBA

Fellows must be able to attend all three in-person sessions in order to participate. Locations will be announced by the end of April 2024.

Questions? Email Andrea at andrea@rockwoodleadership.org. 

Good morning all,

I hope this finds you well. I am reaching out to those who are offering educational programming (BA/AA/certificate program) inside BOP facilities. I was part of the team that created the BA program inside Pelican Bay State Prison (Cal Poly Humboldt), and am now working with Cal State Long Beach Project Rebound on building an education program inside, so  I am somewhat familiar with the relationship between the university and state facilities (CDCR), but have questions about working with the federal system. I am working towards building a program in California with BOP and interested in those who are currently working with them or have in the past. Looking forward to hearing from you and thank you!
 

Hey, everybody!

I want to take this week's post as an opportunity to uplift my girl, Brittany LaMarr! Brittany is a formerly incarcerated prison education advocate, and works with the National Prison Debate League (and was instrumental in making arrangements for the establishment and launch of the MCC Women's Debate team, along with NPDL Director Daniel Throop).

It has been my pleasure to have been a co-speaker with Brittany to discuss our support for the New England Board of Higher Education's Commission on the Future of Education in Prison's report recommendations to improve educational systems and access in prisons.

I've left links below for the plight in Connecticut and the NEBHI report; if you haven't seen it yet, check it out!

https://ctnewsjunkie.com/2024/02/23/formerly-incarcerated-advocates-call-for-expanded-support-for-prison-education-programs/

https://nebhe.org/commission-report/

Join Team CPE! This Women's History Month, we're hiring our first-ever coordinator for full-time focus on our program at York CI—where CPE has created rigorous college access for incarcerated women in Connecticut for 10 years running. Looking forward to adding a passionate collaborator to this project and community.

Apply here: https://careers.wesleyan.edu/postings/10350 

Many universities, community colleges, certificate/technical and vocational programs, and non-accredited courses have already joined the growing HEP community, and with the expansion of Pell, it is now more important than ever for educators hoping to make a foray into prison education spaces to have resources and guidance to start their prison education partnership program.

If you've ever wondered, how does a HEP or a PEP get started? Never fear! The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators has constructed a resource page to help those who are looking to enter the HEP field with information, guidance, and assistance.

https://www.nasfaa.org/starting_pep