The Revolving Door

We still release prisoners with just a bus ticket and a few bucks. With no networking or mentorship opportunities to get the ball rolling, most are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Success stories are all too often an exception rather than the rule.

In the US, 40% of prisoners released will return to prison within three years and 66% of inmates are unable to find work three months after release. Most of those who do find work are relegated to low-wage jobs. So how are we addressing this? Educating incarcerated people reduces recidivism by 43%, and tech education specifically paves a path to securing living-wage jobs.

Breaking the Pattern

In the fall of 2012, I began a new position for Peninsula College teaching incarcerated students at Clallam Bay Corrections Center. Teaching inmates how to play video games is harder yet more rewarding than anything else I’ve experienced during my 11 years in education.

Brian Walsh was the Director of Education when I started out at CBCC, and together we began to work on installing the technical infrastructure, gathering and packaging open-education resources, and building a geek culture inside prison. Fast forward to 2016 and we have a core group of students who are writing database abstraction layers, video encoding, and running evening classes teaching other inmates to code. We are also working hard on adding technical and educational resources that can be used offline.

Organizations like UnLoop, founded in 2014 by David Almeida and Lindsey Wilson, are also making big strides in increasing opportunities for incarcerated individuals and providing them with networking opportunities after their release. They are now working at a women’s prison, doing community outreach, running robot workshops in various facilities, and working towards teaching courses at Monroe Correctional Complex.

What Can You Do?

We recently got approval from the Washington State Department of Corrections to let incarcerated students work on approved open-source projects. Currently, we are looking to identify projects where students could contribute in a meaningful way and start building a portfolio. Our hope is to give them real-world work experience, give back to the community, and publicly credit students with the work they have accomplished.

We are calling on community members to work with us in various capacities. First and foremost, we need to identify appropriate projects. Secondly, we could use help reviewing code from prisoners. Finally, we could use help with identifying and setting up tools so that they can be used offline in a prison environment.

If you have ideas or are interested in helping, please don’t hesitate to contact me at rpulsipher@pencol.edu. You can also find out more about Peninsula College Corrections Education here and here, and UnLoop here and here.