Dear Reader,

Despite what you might hear on the outside about the wealth of opportunities offered to people in prison, the messaging we receive inside is that prison education programs—programming actually proven to reduce recidivism and increase opportunities post-release—is a privilege, not a right. 

Whether it’s basic literary, vocational training, or post-secondary education, there are many barriers to accessing education in prison, especially here in Kentucky. For example, career and technical education is only available to those who already have a high school diploma or GED, despite incarcerated people being nearly twice as likely to have no high school credential at all. And according to Kentucky Department of Corrections, people with the nearest release date are prioritized for enrollment. This means that if you’re serving 20 years, 15 years may pass before you’re able to access certain educational opportunities.

While I certainly have experiences to share about my efforts to pursue higher education inside, you hear from me often enough. One goal of this column is to uplift the voices of people inside. So today, you’re going to meet a man I’m calling Rodeo, also incarcerated at the Northpoint Training Center. Rodeo calls himself a college dropout who went down the wrong path in life. He’s currently trying to get back on track, but prison complicates just about everything, including one of the purported goals of mass incarceration: rehabilitation.

During college, it’s not entirely unusual for young people away from their parents for the first time to find themselves perhaps more invested in partying with friends than actually attending classes. But Rodeo took partying a step further.

“I just stopped going to class,” he explained. “I experimented with drugs, and alcohol really took hold of me. I ended up losing my scholarship, and I just kind of stopped caring about things.”

This began Rodeo’s downward path, one he said came with a “quitting mentality.” He quit everything that was good for him and clung tightly to everything bad. Eventually, he ended up in prison. Now forced to be more clear-headed, Rodeo began reflecting on his past and his many mistakes. It was apparent his downfall began in college. Now locked behind bars, he wondered if it was too late to turn things around. 

“I decided to pursue education and get a college degree, almost like a reboot to my life,” Rodeo said. “But I’m having a very hard time doing it. It’s a lot harder to achieve a college degree in here.” 

When Rodeo first got to prison, regular college programming wasn’t even an option. He decided to enroll in vocational school. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but he figured he could learn some new skills or a trade that might serve him post-release. 

Prison vocational programs typically offer courses such as carpentry, for example, or masonry. Some prisons offer more specialized courses, such as horticulture, welding, and even small engine repair. Once at Northpoint, Rodeo was disappointed to learn that the prison only offered an electrical vocational program. 

“I felt cheated, but I signed up regardless,” Rodeo said. 

It got worse after he signed up. 

Rodeo assumed he was on his way to become a journeyman electrician, part of a four-year apprenticeship program that would eventually enable participants to become master electricians. While it wasn’t what he set out to do with his life, a master electrician’s salary was nothing to sneer at. In Kentucky, these skilled tradesmen make almost $70,000 a year, nearly $20,000 more than the average annual salary across the state. 

But the course seemed strange. The instructor told Rodeo that the program was only 10 months long and essentially consisted of studying from four different workbooks. They were effectively teaching themselves. Rodeo didn’t mind independent study, but he also knew it wasn’t good for everyone, and there would be plenty of guys inside who needed more instruction and guidance. Making matters worse, the equipment they were provided for “hands-on work” was outdated and in horrible condition. 

“Some of the wire we used for practice was so brittle, it just fell apart,” Rodeo recalled, shaking his head.

In the end, Rodeo’s hard work was all for nothing. During “graduation,” there was no certificate or diploma for students to show they actually completed the course. This is because the program wasn’t actually journeyman training or an apprenticeship.

“All I ended up with was an address to a website where potential employers could look up my test scores,” Rodeo said. 

Disgruntled with the vocational program, Rodeo found himself once again ready to completely give up. Then he heard about the Second Chance Pell Grant. Launched by the Department of Education in 2015, the program provides federal financial aid, or Pell Grants, to people in state and federal prisons. As of 2022, the Vera Institute for Justice reported that the program enabled more than 40,000 people to enroll in postsecondary education while incarcerated.

For Rodeo, it’s been a challenging process. He said he spent months arguing with debt collectors over unpaid student loans from his college years. Finally, he received a resolution letter that enabled him to begin taking college courses with Simmons College of Kentucky, a private historically Black college in Louisville, and the only Second Chance Pell Grant program recipient in the state. 

Rodeo participated in one semester of classes with Simmons before he was booted when the Supreme Court rejected President Joe Biden’s plan for a new student loan forgiveness policy. Needless to say, Rodeo wasn’t one of the five million Americans whose student loans were successfully forgiven prior to Donald Trump taking office. 

As congressional Republicans work toward overhauling the federal student loan program, Rodeo’s education is effectively on hold. 

“It’s all complicated and it makes me want to give up, but I won’t quit again,” Rodeo said. “I have already given up on so much. I really need this degree, and I feel like education will change me for the better and give me something to look forward to.”

As people who are labeled “felons,” the scars on our records often make us unemployable. As the Prison Policy Initiative reported, formerly incarcerated people “tend to experience joblessness and poverty that started long before they were ever locked up.” Post-release, an estimated 60% of formerly incarcerated people are jobless.

“We have to do anything we can to make us look better to future employers. We need all of the help we can get, and when we get to the parole board, they want to know the constructive ways we spent our time inside,” Rodeo sighed, taking his last gulp of coffee. “We have to have something to show for it, but I don’t know if what’s offered to us is helpful.”. 

In prison, stagnation is mental death. Many are actively looking for ways to improve themselves or opportunities to help pass the time and prepare for release. So why is pursuing education in prison so needlessly hard? 

Rodeo characterized the endeavor as “never-ending struggle, like being in quicksand and the more you struggle to make it work, the more it pulls you under.”  

It’s clear to those of us inside fighting for education that prisons are far more concerned with punishment than rehabilitation. 

“If they cared about rehabilitation, wouldn’t they offer more opportunities for us?”

“If they cared about rehabilitation, wouldn’t they offer more opportunities for us?” Rodeo said. “There is plenty of room in the hole for people who act up, and two big prison buses to ship people off to even worse places. I don’t like either of those options, and I would rather learn something worthwhile than continue to give up on myself.” 

As college courses and vocational skills training are reportedly made more available to the incarcerated, people inside dare to dream of better lives. But prisons have to give us more to work with because the hurdles and barriers put in our way are sometimes insurmountable. 

At the end of the day, Rodeo said that what he and many others inside want is quite simple: to get a college degree and get out of prison with the ability to take care of their families “without having to break the law or work for slave wages to do it.”

The Right to Write (R2W) project is an editorial initiative where Prism works with incarcerated writers to share their reporting and perspectives across our verticals and coverage areas. Learn more about R2W and how to pitch here.

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor