For people who are incarcerated, college can change their life: The likelihood that they will wind up back in prison after they’re released drops dramatically when they earn their degree. This lower recidivism rate benefits both them as individuals and society as a whole.

To help people in prison along the college pathway, UCI has launched a new initiative called LIFTED, which stands for Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees. People in prison who are working on their associates degree in sociology at Southwestern College can use an existing program open to community college students to transfer to UCI and earn their bachelor’s degree.

In this episode of the UCI Podcast, LIFTED Director Keramet Reiter, who is an associate professor of criminology, law and society at UCI, talks about how college changes the lives of people in prison.

In this episode:

Keramet Reiter, associate professor of criminology, law and society, and director of UCI LIFTED

UCI LIFTED (Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees), a new initiative that gives a pathway for students who are incarcerated to transfer from a community college to UCI to earn their bachelor’s degree

“Higher education means lower recidivism,” a press release announcing the LIFTED initiative

“UCI grant to research pathway to a bachelor’s degree for formerly incarcerated students,” an announcement of a research grant to study the LIFTED program

UCI Underground Scholars, a group for formerly incarcerated students at UCI

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Transcript

AARON ORLOWSKI, HOST

Hurdles abound for formerly incarcerated people seeking to build a life after prison. Too often, these people lack the societal support that would enable them to make positive changes in their lives, and they end up behind bars again. But a college degree can change that.

How can educational opportunities help incarcerated people to reintegrate into society? And what is UCI doing to create that pathway? 

From the University of California, Irvine, I’m Aaron Orlowski. And you’re listening to the UCI Podcast.

Today, I’m speaking with Keramet Reiter, who is an associate professor of criminology, law and society at UCI . She is also the director of a new initiative called LIFTED, which stands for Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees.

Professor Reiter, thank you for joining me today on the UCI Podcast

KERAMET REITER

Thanks so much for having me, Aaron.

ORLOWSKI

So UCI has launched the first prison-to-BA program in the University of California system. It’s called UCI LIFTED, which stands for Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees. And students who are incarcerated are essentially able to earn their bachelor’s degree in sociology from UCI while they’re in prison. So what difference does it make in the lives of people who are incarcerated to earn a college degree?

REITER

So this is a really exciting movement that’s kind of taking off across the United States to understand what a significant difference it can make in people’s lives. So just in terms of studies of the broader impact, people who complete a degree — a college degree — while they’re incarcerated tend to have recidivism rates approaching zero. A big meta-analysis from RAND a few years ago found that for every dollar invested in higher education in prison, there was $5 of social benefit accrued because people are able to get jobs when they get out and become functioning tax-paying members of society. But on the individual level, I think it’s incredibly meaningful, too, just for bringing dignity into a space that our society is increasingly realizing has become hyper-stigmatized to a destructive degree. And I think higher education is really an important step in rolling back those individual effects, also.

ORLOWSKI

Well, and the LIFTED program isn’t the first type of program or the first way that people who are in prison can get a college education. There are current offerings. But what are those and how are those different from what UCI is doing?

REITER

It’s a great question. So there has been a kind of rash in California and nationally of new higher education programs in prison, in part because of this growing knowledge of how valuable and impactful they are. So in California, in 2014, the state actually funded the community colleges to start offering associate’s degree programs in prisons across the state. And before the pandemic, each of the 35 prisons in this state had in-person community college course offerings. So that was a really exciting move on California’s part. And really that degree of public education in state prisons is really unprecedented.

But that means that now there are thousands of students across the state with associate’s degrees in hand. And right now there is only one operational bachelor’s degree in prison in the state. And that’s being run out of Cal State Lancaster. And there’s a few more percolating including one at Pitzer College. So some public, some private. But this initiative will be the first initiative, as you said, at the UC. And it will really be a step, I think, in expanding public education in the state for people who are incarcerated. So the vision of higher ed in the state is that anyone from anywhere can receive a degree in this state. And so the UCs are kind of joining that and opening up this opportunity for incarcerated students to have the Cal State options, to have the UC options. And so we hope our program really be a model that can be replicated across the state with other UC-community college prison partners.

ORLOWSKI

And then, also, before these sort of public university options for both the associate’s degrees and the bachelor at Cal State Lancaster degree program that you mentioned, there have been private for-profit college offerings, as well. Can you tell us a little bit more about the history of those and why it’s important to have these public options, as well?

REITER

Yes, absolutely. So there’s two genres, I’d say, of higher ed options in prison that have persisted through the 1990s and the 2000s in spite of Federal Pell Grants not being available to people in prison between 1996 and this year, basically. So the most recent federal budget now makes people in prison, again, eligible for Pell Grants, but there’s been really limited eligibility over the past more than 20 years. But some programs have persisted, basically in two categories. One is that there have been small liberal arts programs across the country. So Bard College and Goucher College are just two in the Northeast that have continued to operate and support college for incarcerated students. Those programs tend to be really small. And that’s part of what I say is really exciting about what’s happening in California right now, and getting the UCs involved, is that public education is about not just giving a few, a small handful, you know, less than 10 students a year, a college degree, but giving hundreds, if not thousands, of students across the state that opportunity. And so it’s the scalability of public education to me that’s really, really exciting.

And then the other piece, of course, is that — and this is another way in which the public education piece is so important — the other issue is that when there is funding for education in prison, for-profit educators tend to get involved. And so it is one of the fears with reinstating Pell is that educational entities that are conducting courses entirely by correspondence and just getting involved in this space because now there’s an eligible vulnerable population that can tap into federal funding, and those programs might not be accredited. They might not have the same value as some of these studies that are so impactful for people who are incarcerated. And so there is this fear about the problem with potentially having more people in this space who maybe don’t always have the right incentives. And so it’s another way in which public education is such a vital aspect of higher ed in prison.

ORLOWSKI

Well, let’s dive a little bit into how the LIFTED program actually works and what its origins are. So where did the idea first come from to launch this program?

REITER

Well, I think there have been faculty across the UCs kind of talking about what could we do. And we’ve all been talking to each other, people who’ve been involved. I taught in what was the only associate’s degree program in the state at San Quentin when I was in graduate school at Berkeley. And that’s a private program. And I was watching the community college rollout and seeing that there’s this need for higher ed. And so, as I think, faculty at UCLA at Santa Barbara at Berkeley have all kind of been talking to their administrations and this just took off at UCI. Everyone, with a couple of colleagues in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society in particular, we started talking to people across campus, deans and administrators. And everyone we talked to said, this is just so perfectly in line with the mission of UCI, which is proud of being a young, kind of trendsetter UC, and also really proud of being a diversity-serving institution. And so everyone we spoke to really saw this as so perfectly in line with the mission of UCI and and how we see ourselves. And so I think that’s why we were the first ones to really make it happen.

ORLOWSKI

Well, and then the program leverages the existing pathway for community college students. You mentioned that there’s many people who are in prison who are earning their associate’s degrees at California community colleges. So how do those students then leverage the community college-to-UC pathway that is open to students from all backgrounds?

REITER

Exactly. So this is a really — I’m glad you brought this up because this is what I think is really exciting and ultimately sustainable about this program is that because there are associate degree programs and all the prisons across the state, now, there are these people who are eligible for transfer to the Cal States and UCs. And we aren’t leveraging an existing mechanism for our pilot program. So I’ve learned so much about this higher ed bureaucracy in the state that I didn’t know before, but one of the things I’ve learned that’s pretty neat is that there are agreements across the UCs and community colleges between specific departments. So UCI has an existing agreement with our community college partner, Southwestern, that students who earn an associate’s degree in sociology at Southwestern with a 3.5 GPA or higher are automatically admissible to complete their BA in sociology at UC Irvine. So there are these kind of specific degree-based agreements across the state. And we’re leveraging one of those with students who are already enrolled in an associate’s degree in sociology at Southwestern.

And the idea is that as soon as they complete that — but for the pandemic, they would have completed it this year — the hope is they will complete it by the end of the year and be eligible for admission to UCI in fall of 2022. And we’re not pushing out any students. We are just kind of leveraging existing infrastructure and admitting students who already should have been admissible to UCI through these transfer agreements. And the hope is that that’s also very replicable, right? Because these agreements exist across the state. And so these are mechanisms community colleges and UC partners can continue to leverage.

ORLOWSKI

And so how is the education actually delivered? Are these a mix of online or in-person courses, or what’s the situation?

REITER

So again, we have the global pandemic to contend with here, but the vision of the program has always been that our students who are incarcerated will have an experience as similar as possible to our students on campus. And so that means that the majority of classes would be face-to-face, but that there will hopefully be some opportunities for some online and remote education. And of course with the pandemic, those opportunities are expanding really quickly all the time. And also, conversely, the opportunities to be face-to-face in the prison are extremely limited right now. And so our hope is that when we start in the fall of 2022, we will be primarily in person in the prison offering these courses face to face. But our hope is also that at that point, the state will have a broader technological infrastructure to support some remote education, to support things like office hours by Zoom, for instance or some more contact with students and events on campus. But that is all in process right now.

ORLOWSKI

Yeah. So what are the challenges with delivering online educational offerings in the prison system?

REITER

This is really important to understand that right now, the vast majority of prisons don’t have any kind of internet access or infrastructure for doing the kind of online Zoom education that so many of us are engaged in right now. So the prisons in the state have been basically locked down, people say, since March of 2020, meaning that the vast majority of people in these facilities have not seen their family over the last year. They haven’t had any in-person educational access. To the extent education has continued, it has almost entirely been literally by snail mail, sending assignments in and mailing them back out. There are a few pilot programs in the state trying to use Zoom and Canvas. Two I know of, across the 35 state prisons, for a few students. The state has just started to roll out video visiting for people and their families. So there is this growing sense that this is absolutely something that needs to be addressed as the pandemic goes on. And the state is starting to — and the higher ed providers across the state are trying to figure out  — how can we create more resources through things like Zoom or comparable infrastructure for people who are incarcerated to make sure that they do have both family contact and educational opportunity?

ORLOWSKI

Yeah. Just getting them essentially reconnected to society in this online era.

REITER

Exactly. Exactly.

ORLOWSKI

So the students who are in the program, they might start earning their BA while they’re still in prison. And then they may end up being released before they finish the program and they can end up also matriculating at the UCI campus in that case. Some people might be worried about this, but should they be worried about that?

REITER

My first response to this is always you’d be surprised to know how many formerly incarcerated students are on our campus already. And so that I think should be the — maybe that’s surprising, but then you realize, well, I didn’t know, so they haven’t been causing the kinds of worries you might imagine. So there is a growing organization called Underground Scholars that was started at Berkeley and now has chapters across the UCs, that supports formerly incarcerated students on UC campuses. And they have received support from the state legislature and from private foundations and been covered on 60 Minutes. So they are a really incredible student organization and have been a real partner in this LIFTED initiative for us. And I think they are representative of how incredible these students actually are, both in prison and after prison. The students who are in their bachelor’s degrees in prison, or who matriculate onto UC campuses, are students who have overcome an immense amount, are incredibly resilient and tend to be just phenomenal students. I don’t think it’s fair to stereotype such a diverse population, but I think they really have shown through Underground Scholars, just what a difference they’re making on our campuses and in our communities. There are two formerly incarcerated graduate students in my doctoral program right now. There’s one at the law school at UC Irvine. I mean, these are students who are really just exemplars of resilience and rehabilitation. And it’s really exciting to see UCI supporting them and figuring out how to support them better.

ORLOWSKI

Yeah. That’s really incredible, and so inspiring to hear about folks who have made kinds of accomplishments and done that.

REITER

And, I’ll say it’s one of the things, another thing that makes me so excited about having the UCs involved, is that it’s a pathway, not just to a bachelor’s degree, but to graduate and professional school, right. And that’s why I mentioned these formerly incarcerated students in these graduate programs, because I think that really is kind of the next step in reducing the stigma of mass incarceration and facilitating reentry into our communities.

ORLOWSKI

Yeah. And speaking of research, part of the LIFTED program is that UCI researchers will be doing some observations and collecting data to study the best methods for delivering college education to people who are in prison. So what questions will the researchers be looking at and why are those important questions to be studying?

REITER

So, you know, one of the big challenges with this work is just understanding how best to support this population of students who have experienced unique traumas and educational frustrations. And it can be especially hard to identify them and figure out how to support them because California has banned the box, which is a good thing. We do not ask now about your felony conviction when you apply to public higher ed in the state. But that means that it’s hard to identify these students. We don’t have a flag for them in this system, and they have no reason to self-identify, often, especially if there are no resources to support them in the challenges they’re facing. And so one of our hopes with this program is that it will really be a vehicle for better understanding that. Are there particular challenges that these students face, in terms of past traumas they’ve experienced, educational frustrations they’ve had, and are there particular ways that we can better support them?

And again, this is a place where it’s really exciting to be doing the work from UCI, because we have been such a trendsetter, I guess, in terms of having student success initiatives and specialized programs that support former foster youth and Dreamers and veterans. And I think this will be another program where we work with student services to really figure out how best to support these students and develop models to document: What is it that they need to succeed? How do we provide that effectively. And how do we help other institutions replicate that? And so my hope is that because UC integrates research with education, whereas other institutions, I think, often are just overwhelmed trying to get these programs off the ground, I really hope that UC will be able to be a resource to lots of other institutions through this kind of work and integration of research and pedagogy.

ORLOWSKI

Well, you mentioned that the first group of students will be starting in 2022. But what are the growth plans for this program, both in the near term and potentially the long term?

REITER

This is my favorite question, because this is where the real exciting pieces are. So right now there are a little more than 30 students completing their associates degree in sociology at Southwestern and who are incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. And those students, we hope that some of them may be released or transferred to another prison, but our hope is that about 25 of them will matriculate to UCI in 2022. So that will be our first cohort. But there is a pipeline, right? There are already students who are just starting their associates degree in sociology. And so in 2023, if all is going well, you know, we hope will matriculate a second cohort. And so that’s the, that’s the UCI pipeline.

But we’re also already talking with departments across campus who are eager to think about offering other degrees beyond sociology. Sociology was a strategic choice because that’s what one of the degrees community colleges are offering in prisons across the state. And it was a department that was really excited to partner with us at UCI. But our hope is we’ll be able to give people more choice. So, you know, expanding at UCI. And then also really using this infrastructure, we’re building to work with other UCs to build similar programs. So, I mentioned, we’re already talking with faculty across UC campuses, and the hope is that we have all of these agreements in place with sociology, with the prison system, around advising, that will really make it easy for other UCs to replicate this program with other community college partners. So that we have these little triangles of prison-community college-UC across the state.

ORLOWSKI

Well, at the beginning of the conversation, you mentioned that the recidivism rate for incarcerated students who earn a college degree is incredibly low, and that’s a huge benefit to society and to them as individuals. And I think that this program is part of a larger picture of a movement around changes in the criminal justice system to make it a more just system. So how would you characterize that? How does this type of program fit into the broader landscape of where we as a society need to go to make our justice system more fair for everyone?

REITER

Righ, and this gets to the heart of why I’m involved in this, and so passionate about it — is that I’ve been studying prison conditions and mass incarceration for my entire career. And it’s really exciting to be in a moment where — even if we think of this as a very politically contentious time — I think there is incredible bipartisan consensus that what we’ve been doing around incarceration has not worked, that what we do is spend an immense amount of money for a very low return. We have high recidivism rates. We have not much impact on the kinds of crime that we would hope would be affected. In fact, in California, we’ve seen that as we reduce sentences and time in prison, we actually have seen no negative effects on crime whatsoever or, or extremely limited. And so I think as we learn more, we realize that these have been really inefficient policies from a financial perspective and really destructive policies from a social and community perspective, in terms of the ways incarcerating so many people breaks down social networks and family ties and creates more harm than good. And I think one key step in that is shifting the way we invest, to invest in more productive treatment, functionally, with higher ed, and also shifting the way we as a society see people who’ve been incarcerated. And I think education programs do both right. We’re shifting resources into more productive programs and investments that are about care rather than punishment. And we’re shifting public perceptions to give people pathways to new lives.

ORLOWSKI

Professor Reiter, thank you for joining me today on the UCI Podcast.

REITER

Thank you so much for having me, Aaron.