In Oregon, an anonymous donor helps pay for prisoners to go to college behind bars:

In the past two years, The Investor has donated $294,000 so that kidnappers, bank robbers and other felons at three state prisons can go to college behind bars.

His latest gift, just in time for Christmas this year, is $15,000 for women inmates at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville to buy books for themselves.

Oregon’s educational offerings for prisoners have been limited largely to GED classes and vocational training since 1994. That’s the year Congress stopped Pell grants for college tuition for prisoners, effectively shutting down every prison college program in the country.

While I obviously like this story, the starkness of that last line is striking. What do we think will happen to the uneducated inmate when released back into society? S/He will get a job and become a contributor to the community? Or continued ostracism will make a return to prison all the more inevitable? How does that work in the interest of anyone?

Via Inside Higher Ed.