It took me six years to get from where I was to where Bard was. This movement took on renewed urgency following Congresss reinstatement of Pell Grant access to incarcerated students in 2020. All rights reserved. YOON: And part of that crime bill, Dave, was comprised - allocating $10 billion to build more prisons, and $10 billion at the time was enough to pay for higher education in prisons for more than 200 years. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. SEBASTIAN YOON: When I first got into the Bard Prison Initiative, I honestly had low expectations of the program, and I think that's because, in general, as a prisoner, I had low expectations on life. NOVICK: Yeah. Virtually none return to prison. (SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "COLLEGE BEHIND BARS"). In four years of study they become scholars, shatter stereotypes, reckon with their pasts, and prepare to return to society. And I just wonder if you could reflect a bit on how it might have changed you - Dyjuan. Creating educational opportunities in prison nationwide. The recent PBS series, College Behind Bars , chronicles Mr. Halls eventual parole and release in 2015. college behind bars where are they now. WebAnd that had been true for over a generation, and it was well understood and accepted that education was an essential part of criminal justice and of rehabilitation. This is when you, Sebastian Yoon, are speaking at the graduation. College Behind Bars, an Emmy-nominated, four-part documentary about the transformative power of education. Because when people ask that question or that question's being asked, that's usually the implicit assumption, that they are only capable of this level of education. My family loves Bard College. I have several friends who are still incarcerated that I spent my summers outside of class tutoring, and they're now in the program. You have this big smile on your face when you're leaving the auditorium and the mess hall. College Behind Bars, an Emmy-nominated, four-part documentary about the transformative power of education. I have watched them leave prison and have to struggle in ways that I have not because I have had the privilege of a college education. Students accepted to the program take classes in prison taught by Bard College faculty, using the same materials and meeting the same standards as students on the college's main campus. This is FRESH AIR. I was in a poor, disadvantaged community, and I ended up at a very young age in gangs. And the Bard Prison Initiative, which was - began in 1999. In 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act made people in prison ineligible for Pell Grants. DAVIES: Dyjuan Tatro, what was your graduation experience like? Otherwise, you're not doing them any favors. I can give them different types of advice. Now free, Hall, 44, who is a program associate for the Ford Foundation in New York City, is one of the people featured in the powerful new documentary series, "College Behind Bars." You know, what's striking about this program is that - I think a lot of people who think about ways that prisons can help incarcerated people get jobs when they get out of prison is to provide vocational training - you know, teach people to be welders or auto mechanics or, you know, stuff like that. Both of you went into prison as teenagers and came out as young men. Regrettably, though, we have no other information on her because she has kept her distance from all social media platforms and the public eye in general since 2014. Carisa was then arrested on a domestic battery charge in November 2019, with a $600 bond, yet it seemingly went nowhere. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. And there was a tremendous void. Then, he enrolled in the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), a program of Bard College offering higher education to people incarcerated in six New York state prisons. And then this changed in the '90s when we had the crime bill, right? He started his college education behind bars. One of the things I used to do is kind of put my headphones on with classical music, and that's how I would get my reading and get my work done. With Jessica Jesse Roses father getting locked up for 200 years when she was just 7 (allegedly for child molestation), she was essentially thrown into a life of uncertainty. YOON: And it was a very interesting moment for me where I realized that the education that I was receiving in prison was the same education that I would receive had I gone to college out there. And I went to prison for 12 years at the age of 19, 20 for assault. Vocational training is fine, but we should also be having an opportunity for higher education. I guess you still treasure that moment, don't you? When incarcerated students from the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) Debate Union beat a team from Harvard, their victory made headlines around the world. So I walked out of prison on August 10 of 2017, and I was back in college on August 24 finishing my B.A. And I am the most proud father in the world. When he entered prison in 1998, the "get tough on crime" legislation had halted college programs. I'm just interested in your perspective on this because I'm just - I imagine that, in a maximum security facility, there are a lot of folks who just didn't have kind of the educational kind of foundation to do college work the way you did, or maybe I'm wrong about that. And I'm back at BPI today as the Government Affairs Officer, expanding - helping to expand access to college and prison through public investments in the work that we do. Faculty are going to be evaluating what you do as a student, exclusively. "There were guys in the Bard program with me that I would not have talked to, but seeing them in that (educational) environment started a process of me reinventing my identity," he said. DAVIES: This school also has graduation ceremonies, and this is very moving. It focuses on the lives and academic careers of DAVIES: Yeah. "We reduce people to what they have done," Israil said. You know, one of the great things about being in BPI and one of the great things about this education happening in the educational space is that it really, really motivates people to be the best selves and to go on after this opportunity. And I think it bred for me empathy, which is something that I didn't have a lot of when I was a teenager. It's not our business. So we really take the opportunity that we had seriously and try to give back in real, tangible ways to the wider population. ). DAVIES: Yeah. This is the thing we know how to do, and we happen to do it here. But the pilot program only extended eligibility to some 12,000 inmates, out of the over 2 million incarcerated people in the U.S. College Behind Bars makes a moral and fiscal case to change that. Yet we do know she presently resides in Logansport, Indiana, close to her supportive family. When we come home now, we often help each other get jobs. To learn more about the restoration of TAP, read Jessica Neptunes the Director of National Engagement blog post here & Executive Director, Max Kenners, letter to our supporters here. In the beginning, you don't even know how to use a comma. And you see people on this kind of, like, exponential learning curve from places where they, you know, might not seem at first glance that they're ready for "college work," quote, unquote. Colleges or universities partnering in the Consortium. By Jamil Smith They study all the disciplines in the liberal arts. It was just a really, really moving moment to be celebrated on the main Bard campus in that way by all these amazing young people. Good job. They spoke with FRESH AIR's Dave Davies. I was a lonely kid. College Behind Bars is an intimate look at the lives and experiences of a dozen BPI students and their families that confronts and challenges conventional wisdom about the purpose of both education and incarceration. Thats why she was released from LaPorte Correctional Facility for good in September 2018 after serving merely four months. You know, it's interesting. YOON: Two more years after my bachelor's degree in 2017. The students have a quite impressive breadth of curriculum. My father was in Vietnam, came home drug-addicted and has never really recovered from that. Last week, the New York State budget included a major victory for educational equity, ending a 26-year-old ban on access to need-based Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) grants for incarcerated students. So people in the corrections department recognize that as well. Justice in America Episode 29: Schools in Prison I mean, both - from the documentary, it seems that both of you had supportive families. We see him, don't we? And one day, we went to a karaoke bar, and a fight erupted, and somebody ended up losing his life. People were invested in this. But while I was receiving that education, as I said, it was liberating. It radiates and ramifies throughout my entire family structure, you know? For me, my family has been YOON: My dad, appa, I'm sorry for having dishonored our family, for putting you through such an undeserved and unbearable pain. We're in the business of education. They study math, as Dyjuan said, languages, history, literature, art, science, philosophy, economics, public policy, you know, public health. These experiences thus forced her to run away from the group home shed been placed in and work as a sex worker, leading to her arrests for criminal mischief, the battery of a police officer, and more. And you can just see it. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. In fact, in the three years she has been left to her own devices, it looks like she has only led an honest, positive life. For 11 years, he worked to be a perfect prisoner, broke no official rules or inmate codes, and focused on getting out. I went on to work for Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney on his attorney general campaign here in New York. So you can be in class midway, and if the bell rings because the count was off or if there's a security problem, then you have to go back to your cells. (SOUNDBITE OF STEFON HARRIS AND BLACKOUT'S "DAT DERE"). Months after giving birth to her son Wyatt Dalton (December 2020), she was arrested for the charges of marijuana possession as well as public intoxication in April 2021. He worked 11-hour shifts, so he was mostly at work. Bard Prison Initiative students conjugate Spanish verbs at Eastern New York Correctional Facility. So currently, I work as a program specialist with the Democracy Fund of Open Society Foundations, which is one of the biggest philanthropic organizations in the world. Director Lynn Novick and graduates Sebastian Yoon and Dyjuan Tatro talk about how the program changes lives. But new bipartisan legislation could take this program out of the pilot phase and reverse the more than two-decade-old ban on inmates using Pell grants, set by Congress and President Bill Clinton in 1994. Our guests are Lynn Novick, who directed the documentary, and Dyjuan Tatro and Sebastian Yoon, two graduates of the program. YOON: There's this moment where you walk past his door, and all you see is curtains and officers waiting in, like, rows. The type of things that are available to people in prison currently are somewhat outdated. I grew up in a single-parent household, the child of a disabled mother. If this kind of opportunity were widely available and the sort of foundational skills made possible, a lot more people could take advantage of it. WebCollege Behind Bars is the inspiring, emotional, and deeply human story of men and women struggling to earn college degrees while in prison for serious crimes. Therefore, from what we can tell, she now lives a sober life in Crawfordsville, Indiana, alongside her partner and son Marshall Craig Roche who was born in the summer of 2019. This movement took on renewed urgency following Congresss reinstatement of Pell Grant access to incarcerated students in 2020. In spring 2021 the NYS legislature passed the bill, and it was signed into law in July 2021. The documentary, "College Behind Bars," airs tonight and tomorrow night on PBS stations and will also be available for streaming. So I started hanging out in the streets and, you know, I had a crew of boys that I always hung out with. Our associate producer of digital media is Molly Seavey-Nesper. Sebastian Yoon, tell us a little about yourself. DAVIES: You know, some might think that prison inmates would have an easier time focusing on all this rigorous schoolwork because they're literally, you know, captive in the institution and are not distracted by parties or dating or football games like, you know, students on a traditional campus. Web2026. And what the film shows and the work at BPI shows is that that cannot be more untrue. WebCollege Behind Bars is the inspiring, emotional, deeply human story of men and women struggling to earn college degrees while in prison for serious crimes. But I'm wondering, was there a point at which it just seemed hard to adjust? 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