The Prison Education Initiative (PEI) brings Bennington College faculty to Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximum-security men's prison in Comstock, New York. The mission of PEI is threefold: 1) to provide a quality liberal arts undergraduate education to incarcerated students; 2) to support lifelong learning in men and women serving life sentences; 3) to foster transformative conversations around prison reform in America.

History

In April 2015, a panel of educators convened at Bennington to exchange ideas and practical advice around the topic of what liberal arts colleges can contribute to higher education in prisons, and what that contribution can mean for both the incarcerated and for the participating colleges. This convening led to the creation of the Prison Education Initiative (PEI) at Bennington College, which launched in fall 2015 at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York.

Since PEI’s inception, more than 100 students at Great Meadow have taken courses in subjects that include literature, philosophy, social research, history of thought, architecture, political theory, social psychology, math, computer programming, Latin, and U.S. history.

Since 2020, PEI is also spearheading two initiatives aimed at providing educational opportunities to underserved prison populations. We are building out a more robust scholarly infrastructure to support continuing education among those serving life sentences (a group that comprises 15% of the prison population in America). In addition, we are also building out a new program of individualized tutoring to help bridge the gap between a GED and the expectations of a liberal arts classroom. 

Partners

PEI is a member of the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison at Bard College, and is made possible through collaboration with the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and Great Meadow Correctional Facility. The program is funded by Bennington College, the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, the Harry J. Brown Jr. Foundation, the William and Mary Greve Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education (through the Second Chance Pell program), and other foundations and private donors.

People

News

January 31, 2022 – Bennington College prison program awarded $60,000

October 1, 2021 – Think Tank on Continuing Education in Prisons

May 20, 2021 – Bennington College Awarded $10,000 Grant From The Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation

February 24, 2021 – Prison Education Initiative Awarded $40,000 from Mother Cabrini Health Foundation

March 23, 2020 – Prison Education Initiative Awarded $50,000 from Ford Foundation

January 22, 2020 – Prison Education Initiative to Award Associate of Art Degree

April 6, 2018 – Computer Science and Prison Reform

June 19, 2017 – The Future of Higher Education in Prison

August 28, 2016 – Great Meadow Program is a Model for Inmate Education

August 21, 2016 – Books Behind Bars: Great Meadow Inmates See School as Second Chance

July 11, 2016 – Bennington Selected to Participate in the Department of Education's Second Chance Pell Pilot Program

December 4, 2015 – Bennington Gears up for its Prison Education Initiative

Courses Offered

Continuing Education

Preparing for our first college graduation in 2020, we realized about one-third of our students are serving life sentences. For these men, college courses had awakened a curiosity and they expressed a strong desire to continue their education beyond a degree. So we began to build-out novel opportunities to deepen engagements with the humanities for those serving life sentences. In workshops we hosted for prison educators from across the nation, we also realized how substantial this population might be—in American prisons, roughly one in seven inmates are serving life sentences. And yet nearly every prison education program is organized almost entirely around the granting of degrees, a worthy achievement that nonetheless all too often also marks the end of educational opportunities for American prisoners. Encouraged that we were on to something that might serve as a national model for rethinking the humanities in prisons, we began to build out our course offerings, library holdings, assessment metrics, and facility resources to better support the men in our program serving life sentences.