Policy Examples

State of Women's Incarceration Forum

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.

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, 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).

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.

So proud of my Justice Think Tank colleagues Linda Small and Chandler Dugal for their op-ed piece that was published in The Bangor Daily News! Their cowritten article centers on the prong of our Criminal Code group's work that researched record sealing and expungement for formerly incarcerated people and proposed an implementation strategy for the State of Maine!

The Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, launched by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015, provides need-based Pell Grants to people in state and federal prisons. Second Chance Pell has active partnerships with 64 colleges that teach in 28 states. The schools were selected in June 2016 for the initiative, which examines whether expanding access to financial aid increases incarcerated adults’ partici­pation in educational opportunities.

I came across this post in some research that I performed for one of my work groups for justice-impacted professional training design and my heart was warmed by the progressive step that Washington State Department of Corrections is taking to improve their system by hiring a formerly incarcerated person for a salaried administrative position.

The Incarceration Nations Network (INN) developed this toolkit to push for long-term systemic change that moves spending away from futile punishment and devastating harm and toward community justice. This toolkit describes what this effort looks like in the context of the United States. 

The full text of the FAFSA Simplification Act, as passed by the 116th Congress.