Each year, California provides millions of state funding to counties to serve youth within their communities and reduce justice involvement through two major grant programs. First, the Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act (JJCPA), which was enacted by the Schiff-Cardenas Crime Prevention Act and given its current name through a California Senate…

In this response article, the author agrees with Jacobson that the labeling of individuals as "hard to serve" is unfortunate and misdirected in that it suggests that these students are somehow deficient and are the problem rather than identifying complex systemic issues that make some adult education programs necessary in the first…

National rates of juvenile incarceration show that about 33% of the population in correctional confinement has disabilities such as behavioral disorders or specific learning disabilities. All students identified under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) as having a disability are entitled to special education and…

This article utilizes interviews with three teaching artists to interpret their lived experiences of teaching dance classes within New Zealand prisons. Prison environments and prison cultures create a multitude of challenges, such as the physical environment itself, social dynamics and hierarchy, and interaction and relationships with incarcerated…

Explosions in America's incarceration rates have sparked critical examinations of root causes of entry into the criminal justice system. Researchers have predominantly focused on what is known as the school-to-prison pipeline. Solutions have centered on revising school policies and practices targeting certain students for disciplinary sanctions…

Individuals with barriers to employment such as people with disabilities or people who transition from prison to the community face different challenges in navigating the world of work. Participants in this study were incarcerated males (n = 87) who completed the Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI) and the Self-Directed Search (SDS), in addition to…

Recently released statistics from the California Department of Justice (DOJ, 2017) show that arrests of youth ages 10-17 declined in 2016, reaching historically low levels. Arrest rates, which are reported to the state by local law enforcement agencies, fell for the ninth straight year in 2016, continuing a decades-long pattern of decline. Though…

Objective: This study assessed the effectiveness of Seeking Safety on depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with incarcerated women. Method: A randomized controlled trial (N = 40) was used to analyze Seeking Safety's effectiveness compared to a treatment-as-usual control group. Analyses of covariance were used to assess differences…

This qualitative study explored three learning outcomes--critical and creative thinking, ethical reasoning and action, and civic knowledge and engagement--to assess the impact of a liberal education on formerly incarcerated men. Three questions guided this study: 1) How do former inmates describe their postsecondary liberal educational experiences…

New York State has long been a leader in education, both higher education and general education in prison, dating back to the 1800s. Following reforms implemented during the administration of Governor Franklin Roosevelt, New York State was later recognized as having the best prison education system in the country (Gehring 1997). At the heyday of…

This study used qualitative data to analyze how fathers in a rural Pennsylvania prison were involved in their children's literacy, learning, and education before and during incarceration and through the Read to Your Child/Grandchild (RYCG) program. Before RYCG, most fathers took steps such as reading to children, teaching reading and math,…

Purpose: Prisons offer a public health opportunity to access a group with multiple and complex needs and return them to the community with improved health. However, prisons are not conducive to optimal health and there are few frameworks to guide efforts. This study aims to generate insights into health literacy across a young adult prison…

In an effort to humanize the issues surrounding mass incarceration, and to foster empathy in historic site visitors, Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site launched a pilot tour program that hired formerly incarcerated people to give tours of the building. These 15-minute tours allowed visitors to hear personal stories of incarceration alongside…

Prison education is seen in both criminal and education policies as a way of assimilating inmates 'back into society'. In spite of the policy emphasis on education, the practices in prison education vary from prison to prison. The stated aim of prison education in EU and in Finnish national level policies is to teach inmates the skills and…

Prisons across the United States of America are faced with finding ways to reduce illiteracy rates across adult education. One strategy is to offer reading programs that are based on the science of reading. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine if adults in treatment groups across five midwestern correctional institutions who received a…