toledoblade.com --

After getting a perfect 4.0 grade-point average in a recent semester of college, Eric Stephens made the dean's list and received a solicitation to join an honor society.

The 24-year-old Owens Community College student plans to sign up - but thinks he'll have to wait until he gets out of prison.

Stephens, who's incarcerated at the Toledo Correctional Institution, is among some 85,000 inmates nationwide - less than 5 percent of the total prison population - enrolled in college courses while behind bars, according to a new report by the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

The numbers have rebounded since a decade ago, when Congress slashed federal Pell Grant funding for inmates, and some states followed with their own program closings. But the low percentage of inmates seeking higher education while behind bars still troubles inmates and experts.

That's because unlike many people in the general public, they make the link between education and lowered rates of re-entry into a prison system that costs taxpayers nearly $30 billion annually.

Stephens is among the lucky ones: A recent study found wide disparities between states in terms of college educational offerings at prisons.

"I'm just trying to make a change from what I was doing - it don't lead you nowhere but here," said Stephens, who received a five-year sentence in 2003 for a robbery in Toledo. "I haven't been in any trouble here. I'm pretty much in my classes, or I'm in my cell."

Stephens has taken college classes for credit while at two Ohio prisons. His studies largely have been in the skilled-trades area, which remains a focus of the state's prison education system.

Inmate Eric Stephens, who is taking college classes at the Toledo Correctional Institution, recently made the dean's list.
( THE BLADE/ALLAN DETRICH )

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"I like college," he said. "People look at you differently. Some people come to me in the block and say, 'I need help on this.' "

After his release in July, 2008, Stephens said he hopes to get an associate's degree, a job, and help to show his young son the difference between right and wrong.

"He's only 2 now. When I get out, he'll be 4, so I still have a lot of time to teach him," Stephens said.

No 'return' on investment

On a recent day at the Toledo prison, Owens instructor Art Liewert spent two hours in a plain classroom with a handful of inmates in blue prison uniforms - each seated in chairs toward the rear of the room. His skilled-trades textbook was opened, with worn pages highlighted and tagged for importance.

He stood up from time to time, motioning in excitement, and asking students to discuss certain industrial electrical symbols. Sometimes, he answered his own questions. Other times, the students would chime in with answers. They ended the period by discussing an upcoming final, which will follow their Thanksgiving Day class break.

Outside the classroom, spaces above doorways are painted with sayings like "Education = Success," and "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

Names of dozens of General Educational Development diploma recipients are written on individual concrete blocks.

Key studies show that education helps reduce prison recidivism rates. One such study, "Education Reduces Crime," which focused on Ohio, Minnesota, and Maryland, noted significantly lower rates of rearrest, reconviction, and reincarceration in Ohio and Minnesota among prisoners who were exposed to education.

In Maryland, analysts there said offenders who did not return as a result of educational programs saved the state more than $24 million a year, twice the state's investment in its correctional education program.

"All you can say is these guys are going to get out and they're going to have to get a job. [Education] is probably the most positive program you can have here, and it's cheaper," said John Scott, who oversees the University of Findlay's prison education program at the Allen Correctional Institution in Lima, Ohio.

Limited offerings

There is a vast difference among the states in college-level educational offerings in prisons, the Institute for Higher Education Policy study found. The majority of prisoners taking college courses were enrolled in programs in just 15 state prison systems that accounted for 96 percent of all college degrees and certificates awarded to inmates nationwide.

One reason for this disparity is a lack of support from legislators and the public in many states over using taxpayers' dollars on prisoners' educations, particularly when state budgets are tight.

The gap in state-by-state offerings for education, with the exception of some uniform federal programs geared toward younger offenders, is evident just by taking a look at the tri-state area.

In Michigan, the law bans any state money - as well as employees' time and even prison materials - from being used for college education. Indiana, meanwhile, gives offenders time off their sentences for completing either associate's degrees or bachelor's degrees.

"College courses for inmates is a bit of a touchy subject," acknowledged Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections, which has a $1.8 billion annual budget that sustained cuts recently in its funding for high school-level educational programs. "We don't want to afford prisoners opportunities that law-abiding citizens out in the community don't have."

In Ohio, federal and state money - to the tune of about $2,000 annually for each of some 2,500 inmates - is spent on college training. But Jerry McGlone, superintendent of education for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said offerings have been scaled back in past years. Classes taught by state-compensated Owens and University of Findlay instructors, as well as similar teachers from other institutions across the state, are expected to be more skills-based - with actual degrees banned.

"History is out. Civil War is out. Shakespeare is out. It's the kind of stuff we think employers would want right way," he said.

Matter of perception

While there's nothing in Ohio's law to preclude them from offering degrees to inmates, Mr. McGlone said state leaders believe taxpayers as a whole don't support postsecondary education in prisons.

"I think nationally it's coming back, and it's proven to be effective," Mr. McGlone said of the college training. "But politically, it's not the most popular program."

But that doesn't mean advocates won't continue pushing for change. In its report, the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a Washington-based, nonprofit organization that attempts to increase access to and success in postsecondary education through public policy research, has called for a national effort to expand support for college-level correctional education.

And Bill Tregea, an associate professor at Adrian College who volunteers teaching inmates at the nearby Gus Harrison Correctional Institution, has asked Michigan leaders to consider incorporating general college access assistance into the new statewide prisoner re-entry initiative.

Mr. Marlan of the Michigan corrections department said that approach is on the radar and likely will be incorporated as the state continues to unfold its pilot initiative - one that's aimed at combating a 50 percent return rate among those released from prison. But he said inmates typically face more immediate needs upon release.

"It's not so much to give them a college education; it's let's give them an ID. It's so they have placement set up, a job."

Mr. Tregea, meanwhile, believes increasing college education in the prison is an answer to the problem. He hopes Michigan eventually will change its stance on funding college for prisoners.

"We have to lower [prison] budgets. We have to reduce recidivism. That's the opening, in my view, for prison postsecondary education," he said.

"And it's pragmatic: We can't keep building more prisons and throwing away the keys. We have to start giving people keys to stay out."

Contact Kim Bates at: kimbates@theblade.com or 419-724-6074.

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