[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 126 (Monday, September 12, 1994)] [Senate] [Page S] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov] [Congressional Record: September 12, 1994] From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] CONGRESS IS STEALING OUR COLLEGE EDUCATIONMr. SIMON. Mr. President, when we were considering eliminating the Pell grants for prison inmates, I was one of those who opposed that policy. It makes sense if prison inmates are never going to get out of prison, but it doesn't make sense when the huge majority of those in our prisons will come out. We are doing far too little in the way of constructive effort for those in prison. This has been one of the few constructive things. The New York Times carried an op-ed piece by Jon Marc Taylor, who is a prison inmate in Missouri--I gather in a Federal prison. Our response to the whole problem of crime has been shortsighted, and there is no better illustration than our taking Pell grants away from those in our prisons who want to pursue further education. I ask to insert into the Record the op-ed piece by Jon Marc Taylor. The article follows: [From the New York Times, Aug. 24, 1994] There Ought to Be a Law (But Not This Crime Bill) Congress Is Stealing Our College Education (By Jon Marc Taylor*) Jefferson City, Mo.--On April 19, I ``celebrated'' my anniversary. On that day I had been locked up for 14 years. I had survived and even grown stronger in the crucible of the keep (as good as any reason to celebrate), but after watching NBC's ``Dateline'' that evening, I feared I had outlived the best chance any ex-con has of making it once he hits the bricks again. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Jon Marc Taylor, a prison inmate in Missouri, won a Robert F. Kennedy journalism award last year. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The lead segment on ``Dateline'' that night was on prisoners receiving Pell higher education grants to help finance undergraduate college education. A measure denying Pell grants to inmates was up for a vote in the House the next day; the Senate had already passed such a measure. And now Congress is about to turn the exclusion, incorporated into the crime bill, into the nation's policy on higher education for prisoners. Since 1982, when I enrolled in a state university's prison extension program, I have managed to complete associate and bachelor's degrees with the help of Pell grants, and then, with the assistance of family, friends and church groups, became the first prisoner in my state to earn a graduate degree. I began a doctoral program in education and completed a few courses before my transfer to another state temporarily stalled that guest. By then, higher education had so enriched my soul that with my own resources I started a second baccalaureate program in criminal justice and psychology. Over the years, I have witnessed countless changes in my fellow convicts and brother classmates. White and black offenders not only got along but actually and began to respect one another. My fraternity brothers spoke about careers, going straight and, even more remarkable, about being proud of that life style. When prisoner-students got out, a truly remarkable thing happened. They did not come back. In May, a friend of mine and a two-time loser, who during his second bit enrolled in the prison college program, worked full time and started a family after his release. He is now receiving his bachelor's degree, with honors, in writing. Another acquaintance, who is being released after 15 years, is already enrolled in graduate school. My ex-cellmate, who completed part of his degree in prison, is a manager at a burger chain and attends a nationally ranked university. All three men depended on Pell grants. Now, it appears that one of the few shining stars I have seen in the dismal galaxy of corrections is fading out. Its end is due in part to misinformation like the ``Dateline'' piece, which implied that a miscarriage of justice was transpiring at the expense of Joe (and Jane) College. The show told us that some 27,000 inmate-students receive Pell grants worth $35 million annually. What was not reported was that $6.3 billion in grants went to 4.3 million students the same year. The report didn't mention that prisoners receive about one-half of 1 percent of all Pell grants. Then it said that half of those who apply for assistance are denied Pell grants and that inmates unfairly skew the need-based formula to their benefit. We were not told that those denied aid generally come from families with incomes about the $42,000 ceiling set by Congress. With prisoners expelled from the Pell program, little will change. All students who qualify for grants in a given year receive them. The $35 million ``saved'' will be distributed to the other recipients; evenly divided, it would amount to less than $5 per semester for each one. Only vaguely did ``Dateline'' suggest that prison college programs reduce the likelihood of the participants' return to prison. This seems a strange oversight when the purpose of prisons, aside from deterrence, is to rehabilitate. The debate over the efficacy of rehabilitation has been vitriolic, but there remains little doubt that the better educated the ex-convict, the smaller the chance of recidivism. That has been documented since the 1970's. In December, the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported a 40 percent recidivism rate for all Federal parolees while among college graduates the rate was 5 percent. Since it costs $25,000 a year to incarcerate someone, with $11.5 billion invested in concrete and barbed wire in 1990 alone, any program that routinely cuts inmates' return rates in half should be expanded, not eliminated. The average cost of a skill-related associate's degree earned in prison is $3,000. This is a little over 10 percent of the cost of a single year of incarceration. Yet states are spending more for penitentiaries than universities. Congress is doing more than shuttering prison college classrooms. To a large extent it is closing the door to hope for a future after release. But hope is the critical ingredient, I have learned. It forms the bulwark against the insanity of dehabilitating incarceration and the corrosive anger of monotonous, petty regimentation. Some people argue that inmates have lost the ``right'' to a college education at public expense. What they fail to consider is that the issue is not rights, but reclaiming humanity. And researchers are finding that it is in the cognitive powers that positive restructuring (rehabilitation, if you will) must take place. We can pay for the opportunity now, or we can pay much more later. The move by Congress is not surprising. Politicians have been playing to the cheap seats with their ineffectual litany of ``get tough on crime.'' The crime bill will spend more public money on cell blocks--and more poorly educated, untrained offenders will be released back into society. And nothing will change the economic and social conditions that feed the frustrations, ignorance and futile coping attempts that we call crime in America. ____________________