Student demographics

In terms of race/ethnicity and age, the 63 students enrolled in 136 courses in spring 2023 are fairly representative of prior College Program students. Compared to 2018 College Program students, those who identified as Latina/Hispanic in 2023 increased from 35 to 50.6 percent. The proportion of African American/Black students also increased: from 5 to 12.7 percent. White/Caucasian students decreased from 33 to 25 percent, as did American Indians from 9 to 6 percent. The proportion of students who identified as biracial increased from 13 to 18 percent. Fourteen students identified as biracial and one identified as tri-racial. Eighteen of the 63 students, 28.6%, spoke a language other than English before they learned English.

There was a dramatic age difference between 2018 and 2023 in the youngest students (20-29 years old): their proportion doubled from 12 to 24 percent. The percent of students aged 30-39 decreased from 42 to 29 percent, while those 40-49 years old remained stable, as did the oldest age group 50 years or older.

Age

Race

Note: 13% of students are biracial and therefore counted in multiple categories.

Language

28.6% spoke a language other than English before they learned English.

Dr. Kristin Valentine, Retired ASU Faculty, Communication and Women’s Studies

What I do and why

Currently, I'm co-teaching Gender and Society, a for-credit sociology course. Dr. Peg Bortner and I secured a grant from ASU's Emeritus College to fund tuition and supplies for ten qualitied women incarcerated at the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) in Phoenix. We study multiple aspects of the impact of gender on our lives. My specialties are education, families, popular culture, and religion. I prepare lectures, find provocative questions to ask and discuss, and help students prepare short essays on these topics.

In the five years from 2008 to 2013 of volunteer teaching at FPC, I taught creative writing and communication. For the previous forty years, I taught a non-credit course in one of the Arizona Correctional facilities for women. From my experiences teaching in Arizona prisons, I saw the benefits for incarcerated students of coupling creative writing with communication skills. I now see them develop a wider interest in society with topics about gender and society they may never have thought to investigate.

Why I do it?

Higher education classes for incarcerated people benefit the greater society as well as the individuals receiving educational opportunities. Through higher education, formerly incarcerated people can contribute to society as wage earners and citizens. As Stevens and Ward state, "Results show that inmates who earned associate and baccalaureate degrees while incarcerated tend to become law-abiding individuals significantly more often after their release from prison than inmates who had not advanced their education while incarcerated.  One conclusion drawn from these findings is that it is less expensive to educate inmates than to reincarcerate them."

My aim is to add a positive push to the justice pendulum, away from the punishment and retribution policies that don't work and toward rehabilitation and reintegration through education that does work.

Students tell me they enjoy the laughter that spontaneously occurs when they listen to each other, that they feel safe, are more self-confident, and can mentally escape from prison control while they work on their courses and later in class, when they share their ideas and questions with each other and with their professors.

• Mr. Antonio Espree, ASU, African and African American Studies and Justice Studies
• Ms. Russell Reyes, ASU, Criminology and Criminal Justice

• ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation
• Federal Prison Camp – Phoenix
• Incarcerated Re-Entry Distance Learning Program – Rio Salado College