My spouse passed along to me this link to this article from The Washington Post without any comment at all: “Georgetown University to introduce degree program for Maryland inmates.” Good for Georgetown. Good for the State of Maryland. Best for the inmates. I was particular taken my Georgetown’s decision to offer a liberal arts degree program. Having been a staunch defender and facilitator of the liberal arts for many years, it was good news to me to know that they aren’t considered utterly dead by everyone else. In fact, my experience with prison education leads me to believe that they are more necessary now than every, especially in that context. The ways in which we will ultimately have to address the problems of American Incarceration will require us to think broadly and think critically, two skills that the liberal arts are most apt at imparting.
As it stands, most prison education beyond the GED or high school level tends toward the vocational. Certainly this seems to be a pragmatic approach to the situation: once you leave the prison, you will need a job skill. Yet I know inmates in auto mechanic vocational programs who have complained that the cars they learning on and the technology they are given are about 20 years behind the times. If they have 10 more years to serve, then they feel that they are only going to be valuable as a nostalgia mechanic. I have seen inmates working apprenticing for electrical and pipefitting trades while on the inside, and they have been generally very happy with those programs, but the prospects for those with an interest in and talent for “higher” education are far more curtailed. I have often marveled at the college courses in business and accounting that are offered because, if you have a felony conviction, the chances of getting, say, an accounting license in many states is virtually nil. If you want to start your own business after release, that is something that probation offices generally look at with more than a bit of suspicion.
In the Post article, Robert Green, Maryland’s secretary of public safety, uses all the right buzzwords about safety, engagement and breaking cycles, but I’ve learned to be a sceptic when it comes to prion bureaucrats. The words bring in funding, and that looks good for them. The words might even have a modicum of sincerity, but my sticking point is in the final quotation. Green says, “If individuals are going home, it’s our responsibility to make sure they’re prepared to engage with the communities that they’re going to.” There’s some truth in that, but let’s not forget that former inmates aren’t the only people who need to be prepared and need to engage. I need people to be prepared to engage with me. If I’m at liberty, I need to be met with the liberated minds of potential employers who don’t just file my prison-inflected application in the trash. I need to meet with a community that does not assume, “once a criminal, always a criminal.” Inmates can be educated to be productive when they are released, but the world needs to accept them as productive and valuable in their own right, not as, at best, damaged goods and charity cases. I’m glad that inmates are getting a liberal education. If only the rest of the world could be educated to be more liberal.