In the second essay from the LISC and Nonprofit Quarterly series “Community Strategies for Systems Change,” Syrita Steib, a 2020 LISC Rubinger fellow and founder of Operation Restoration in New Orleans, describes how access to education in prison and after is a crucial tool in the long-haul work of prison abolition. At Operation Restoration, led by formerly incarcerated women, transformation is achieved through multiple avenues in its policy and programmatic work. As Steib notes in the piece, “it’s clear to me that education inside prison changes the prison’s culture and environment and, therefore, can be a powerful tool for change.”
The excerpt below was originally published on Nonprofit Quarterly:
Why Access to Education Is Key to Dismantling Mass Incarceration
By Syrita Steib, Operation Restoration
It wasn’t until I was about halfway through serving a 10-year prison sentence for a crime I committed when I was 19 that I began taking college classes. In the prisons where I was held before, access to higher education was limited to people with shorter sentences—under five years—supposedly because those people would be better positioned to make use of that education on the outside. I often say that I could have had a doctorate by the time I was released if my access had been different.
When I was released from prison in 2009, I applied to the University of New Orleans. I checked the box asking if I had a conviction. I was denied admission even though I had excellent grades and test scores. A couple years later, I decided to do it differently: I filled out the application again, same as before, but this time I didn’t check the box. I was admitted, received scholarships, and eventually graduated cum laude from Louisiana State University Health Science Sciences Center New Orleans with a degree in clinical laboratory science. I then became a medical technologist with plans to go to medical school.
But that was me—one person among the 600,000 who are released from prison every year in America. We know that many prospective students don’t apply to colleges or universities after encountering questions about an applicant’s criminal history. They assume there’s no hope, no way forward. And this is just one of the countless obstacles that block incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people from receiving the education that they need. Barring people in prison from access to higher education because their sentences are too long, or barring them from the financial aid, technology, or internet required to engage in educational pursuits—these are all part of the criminal justice landscape.
Avoiding the Recidivism Trap
We know that there’s an inverse relationship between recidivism and education. A Texas study found that while systemwide recidivism was 43.3 percent, for people who achieved a bachelor’s degree, that rate fell to 5.6 percent, and for those with master’s degrees, it was less than one percent. The Center for Prison Education, reporting national figures, estimates that taking college courses in prison reduces the likelihood of recidivism by 43 percent.
Around 2016, while I was studying for the MCATs, I worked on behalf of the women that I had left behind by speaking publicly about my prison experiences and what needed to change. I began meeting women doing the same kind of work and realized this was something I could do full time.
I decided that medical school would have to wait. Instead, I became the founder and executive director of Operation Restoration, a Louisiana nonprofit dedicated to supporting women and girls impacted by incarceration. Today, we have a staff of 20 people who support justice-involved women and girls. Eighty percent of our staff is formerly incarcerated or otherwise impacted. All our programs have been designed by formerly incarcerated women.