Bard Prison Initiative

The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) is restoring higher education to the prisons of New York State. For more than 20 years, college-in-prison programs had slashed rates of reincarceration from 60 percent to less than 15 percent. They spread higher education among the most isolated communities and were the most cost-effective form of public correctional spending. Despite these facts, funding for prison colleges was eliminated in 1995, when some 350 such programs closed nationwide. Today, BPI runs college programs inside three long-term, maximum-security prisons and two transitional, medium-security prisons. Among these five prison campuses BPI enrolls nearly 200 full-time incarcerated students—women and men—in a rigorous and diverse liberal arts curriculum, offering both associate and bachelor degrees. Since 2005, more than 80 incarcerated students have received A.A. degrees and 10 have received B.A. degrees.

The existence of the Bard Prison Initiative also has a profound effect on the intellectual life of the Bard College campus. Each week, roughly 40 undergraduate students visit regional prisons as volunteers. They facilitate a wide variety of precollege opportunities from GED mentoring to courses in theology and workshops in the arts. These on-campus students can also enroll in a range of classes related to their experiences with BPI. A number of Bard/BPI alumni have gone on to organize similar volunteer programs across the country.

Website: http://www.bard.edu/bpi/