The aim of this dissertation was to evaluate the effect of the Columbia International University Prison Initiative program on the spirituality of male inmates incarcerated within South Carolina's Department of Corrections. The Prison Initiative program is an accredited two-year associate's degree in Biblical studies offered to SCDC inmates.…

The eligibility rules of state financial aid programs vary widely by state and by program. This is also true of eligibility rules pertaining to students impacted by the justice system. This goal of this resource is to enable stakeholders to compare eligibility requirements pertaining to justice system impact across major aid programs and states.…

The purpose of the present study was to examine college students' and college educators' attitudes toward offenders with mental illness (MI). A non-experimental, exploratory research design was used to measure the following variables: demographics characteristics, academic major/teaching discipline, and personal relationships with offenders.…

Perceptions and expectations of masculinity in the United States create difficult conditions for men to discuss the pressures they feel around performing masculinity practices. By remaining relatively silent about these pressures, men secure greater access to material and ideological benefits promised through the patriarchal dividend. The…

This study aimed to determine the learning patterns and experiences of incarcerated adults within correctional settings and how their prison learning transforms their lives after they are released. In this qualitative research, semi-structured interviews were conducted to obtain the opinions of eight formerly incarcerated people who experienced…

Although incarcerated individuals have committed potentially 'immoral' crimes, many are also parents, and need to foster their children's moral development. As such, incarcerated parents occupy a paradoxical position: they are labelled as morally deviant yet simultaneously expected to provide moral guidance for their children. This study explores…

Youth with and at-risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) served in alternative education settings often experience challenges with writing due to various deficits across academic, behavioral, and social-emotional domains, especially in the area of writing. These youth also are less likely to engage in self-determination skills such as…

Background: Between 70 million and 100 million Americans have a record of interaction with the criminal legal system, a group facing stigma and discrimination in civic participation, housing, employment, and education. Justice-impacted people face collateral consequences in the community, making reentry programs essential to success at…

In this article, I document and analyze all municipal, state, and county-level efforts for Black reparations in the United States. Most efforts resemble H.R. 40's exploratory commission model, possibly due to policy path dependency. Few geographies have allocated funding for committee recommendations, but some have allocated funds for committee…

This research considers Pell grant restoration for incarcerated people for the field of higher education in prison. Using the original data, we outline the limits of Pell funding in the prison context by surfacing persistent funding challenges that the Pell grant alone cannot address and may exacerbate. By providing the necessary investments to…

Research shows that the vast majority of students who are diagnosed with learning disabilities in school are, in fact, dyslexic. Still, many students with dyslexia are not adequately identified, assessed, or supported with research-based interventions. Adults with dyslexia report struggling with reading difficulties from as early as kindergarten…

There is currently bipartisan support for criminal justice reform in the United States. One reform, recently passed through the Consolidated Appropriations Act/COVID relief package (December 2020), restored need-based, higher educational aid for incarcerated persons. With a resurgence of college-in-prison programs on the horizon, this article…

This study is a content analysis of K-12 U.S. history curriculum standards from 50 states regarding curricular re/presentation of Asian Americans. The guiding research questions are as follows: (1) What is the frequency of Asian American content covered in K-12 U.S. history standards from 50 states? (2) How do the standards depict Asian Americans…

Nationally, one in 100 adults is currently incarcerated. Meanwhile, more than 2.7 million U.S. children--or one in 28 children (The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2010)--currently have a parent who is incarcerated, and many more U.S. children face the daily effects of familial incarceration due to past parental incarceration or the incarceration of other…

In this research paper we focus on the problems concerning inmates' access to education through Second Chance Schools operating within penitentiaries due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A specially encrypted platform has been created through open-source software that can provide distance learning and does not allow access to any part of the internet…