What’s next for a Higher Education in Prison Research Infrastructure?

The Higher Education in Prison Research Infrastructure (HEPRI) project sought to catalyze discussion in the higher education in prison (HEP) research community about the state of the field and to identify those hurdles that still inhibit high quality, ethical research from taking place. As a relatively young area of study that does not necessarily conform to existing academic structures and divisions, we believed it was critical and timely to start discussions about shared standards of practice and rigor, as well as identify the indispensable partners that will need to be engaged to ensure a thriving HEP research ecosystem. To achieve these goals, the project published a working paper that described what a research infrastructure for the field might look like, hosted webinars for the research community, and facilitated two working groups on major themes: organizing funders and participatory action research. Through this work and the work of the wider community the state of HEP research has advanced, yet, there is much more to be done.

The need for a robust and ethical research infrastructure has grown as the field itself has expanded. As has been much reviewed elsewhere, the 1994 crime bill dealt a near fatal blow to HEP programs, and those that endured were often small and privately funded.¹ This landscape has dramatically changed, even over the course of this project. As the Department of Education’s Second Chance Pell experimental sites initiative grew, and more and more programs came online as support for reforming the criminal legal system increased, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore or gloss over questions about the quality and impact of higher education in prison programs or the outcomes for their students. Now, with the restoration of Pell funding for all people who are incarcerated set to take place on July 1, 2023, there is increased urgency in ensuring that this new stream of funding is used to support high quality programming that will support the goals and aspirations of people in prison.

To help ensure that the restored Pell funding will not be exploited by bad actors offering low quality programming, the Department of Education undertook the Negotiated Rulemaking process to establish guardrails and reporting requirements for programs taking advantage of the federal funding. The now finalized rules have scaled back the significant levels of reporting from college programs that were originally proposed, which will hopefully encourage more colleges to participate in the program. This is, however, a mixed blessing. While this shift will likely encourage the growth of college in prison programming, it also means that the current lack of data and reporting on student outcomes will continue. It is therefore more critical than ever for the field itself to continue to organize and build a research infrastructure.

These developments have thrown the need for a research infrastructure into high relief, but perhaps of most concern is the role that correctional institutions will play in determining whether or not colleges and universities are operating in the best interest of students. Corrections agencies are not, of course, experts in higher education and lack the expertise and capacity to make such a determination on their own. Yet, there is still to date an insufficiently robust body of research, or network of researchers, to support and inform corrections as they make these decisions.

It is also important to point out that while the study of higher education outside of prisons is a robust academic field, the specificity of the carceral context means that structures and frameworks from the free world cannot necessarily be adopted wholesale in HEP. Moreover, there is a strong emphasis on preparing people for reentry and employment post release, an emphasis born of the stark challenges people face after their incarceration as well as bipartisan emphasis on reducing recidivism through education. These goals do not fit well into existing frameworks for studying student outcomes, and though there is debate in the field as to the importance, or even relevance, of recidivism as an educational metric, supporting people’s successful reentry is an implicit goal for many practitioners in the field. It is also questionable as to whether the wholesale adoption of systems and frameworks from the wider field would even be desirable to begin with. The strong emphasis on racial equity and social justice in HEP should dissuade us from uncritically adopting frameworks from the free world that are themselves neither equitable nor just. Despite the challenges facing the field at this critical moment, there is also tremendous opportunity to create frameworks and research agendas that are rooted in equity and social justice and that hold systems to account in a way that is lacking in the broader field of education research.

What does this mean for HEP Researchers?

While this project sought to begin a conversation about the infrastructure needed to conduct quality, ethical research on HEP, the significant changes that have occurred since the project’s inception have forced certain pieces of this infrastructure to the fore. First and foremost is the need for adequate data infrastructures and protocols. Conducting research on HEP programs and student outcomes has long been constrained by the lack of available data. Students in prison are not, for example, disaggregated in the Integrated Postsecondary Data System (IPEDS), limiting the researchers ability to understand this particular student population. Many HEP programs are small, some enrolling only a dozen students at a time, and at such a scale programs have not felt it necessary to collect data. ² At such scales there is also a concern over student anonymity and privacy, which is an important consideration for the field. As Ithaka S+R has documented elsewhere, the lack of technology inside of prisons likewise hampers data collection and reporting, and programs may keep records in analog formats which makes productively working with this data significantly more time consuming and difficult.³

Because Departments of Corrections are critical partners in operating HEP programs, and in the case of programs that receive Pell funds as a “Prison Education Program” (or PEP, the Department of Education’s term for a program that has undergone the process to be eligible to receive Pell funding), the direct oversight entity of college programming, it is critical to establish successful collaborations. Indeed, programs that become PEPs will be in the rather unique situation of being overseen by a non-educational entity. Furthermore, for those programs and DOCs that choose to require the now optional outcomes metrics proposed in the DoE’s rules, further collaborations and data sharing agreements (e.g. with Departments of Labor) will be necessary. Facilitating these horizontal relationships is a complex challenge, but there are models of how this can be done effectively: state coalitions for higher education in prison are taking shape across the country, and other third party organizations like the Vera Institute of Justice, the Tennessee Higher Education Initiative (THEI), and Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison are examples of entities that could take on such a role.

While these collaborations will make HEP function, there is still a dire need for funding research. After all, these collaborations are meaningless if they do not lead to effective, high quality education. With Pell funding returning, there will be less need to fund HEP programs directly, and private foundations are well positioned to shift their roles to supporting HEP at a more systemic level. ⁴ As foundations often work across a variety of intersecting issues they may also offer complementary perspectives or fund initiatives or research that may not otherwise be supported by state funding. For example, the optional metrics for evaluating PEPs principally focus on student outcomes, specifically reenrollment, job placement, and earnings, and while these are important metrics, they do not capture the totality of the value of access to higher education for people in prison (and indeed, practically speaking, preclude the experiences of people serving long or life sentences). Private philanthropy is, however, well suited to supporting research on the impact of HEP programming beyond such standard metrics and to support the development of a broad, well supported articulation of the value of higher education in prisons.

A foundational element of any research infrastructure must of course be the researchers themselves. Ethical and high quality research in this space must center the lived experiences and perspectives of those who have been impacted by the criminal legal system, especially those who are currently or formerly incarcerated. Participatory research models hold special promise in this regard, but a major challenge is the training of participants in research methods. This is not, of course, due to a lack of capability of those in prison, but rather a result of several intersecting challenges: their limited access to standard academic resources, insufficient emphasis on research skills in course learning goals, and the wider barriers students from marginalized populations face in pursuing graduate studies.

Growing the Research Infrastructure: Priorities

In light of the significant changes to the field over the past years, and drawing from the research and conversations conducted through this project, we outline the following priorities for the field.

Develop Shared Standards of Methods, Practice, and Rigor
In the project’s working paper, “agreements” are proposed as one of the three critical elements of a research infrastructure. While these can be formal, written agreements, for example, a memorandum of understanding between an HEP program and DOC, unwritten agreements about best practices, methods, and standards of rigor will be essential for the success of the research infrastructure and research on higher education in prisons writ large. For example, it is widely acknowledged that it is critical to “center the voices” of people impacted by the criminal legal system in research on HEP, but what this “centering” actually looks like in practice can vary widely, ranging from mere tokenization to deeply collaborative partnerships. “Success,” for both students and programs, is likewise a much discussed but ill defined topic of study in higher education in prison. While much has been made of recidivism and the need to expand beyond it, there has yet to be a well articulated and broadly accepted definition of “success” by which programs can be evaluated and compared. While researchers must be free to choose the most appropriate methodology for their study, developing a more cogent articulation of best practices will aid the field in producing quality, ethical research.

Developing these shared practices will take time, but can be accelerated by creating opportunities for researchers to convene, share their work, and learn and discuss with peers. Currently, there are few opportunities for researchers to come together in this way as most such gatherings tend to focus on practice and advocacy. This focus is rooted in the history of HEP, especially in the funding starved environment most programs have traditionally operated in. Research, however, is a necessary component of these discussions as it informs practice and provides evidence for effective advocacy and so must be seen as a necessary adjunct to both. Indeed, though the restoration of Pell funding represents a long sought victory for the field, it cannot be forgotten that Pell access was taken away before and can be again should the political winds change. Given this reality, it is crucial to capitalize on the current momentum behind criminal justice reform to build a broad articulation of the value of higher education in prison to support a sustainable future.

Lowering Barriers to Entry
Scholars wishing to conduct research on higher education in prison face numerous barriers in getting projects off the ground. Researchers are often faced with a lack of existing data on students and programs, push back from ill-informed Institutional Review Boards (IRB), resistance from DOCs themselves, among many other challenges. These challenges can create high barriers to entry as the time needed to overcome these challenges may not align with funders’ timelines and funding cycles or college and university tenure clocks. Minimizing such barriers to entry is one of the main functions of a research infrastructure, and addressing the three challenges outlined above has the potential to significantly catalyze research in the field.

The lack of even the most basic data on students and programs is a major challenge for evaluating higher education in prison programs and student outcomes. Building data infrastructure will be an essential step in accelerating the amount of research conducted in the space. This will require basic tools and technologies to be made available in prisons as well as data sharing agreements between DOCs and Institutions so that data can be efficiently gathered. The ethics of data collection in HEP programs must also be thought through. Many programs start small, perhaps with fewer than 20 students, and this raises concerns about student privacy and anonymity should their data be disaggregated from the rest of the campus. While this is important, it is also the case that unless the data is disaggregated, we will have few means to evaluate programs or make positive interventions to increase student attainment and success, and so privacy concerns must be weighed against our ability to hold programs to account. Furthermore the small size of programs can often discourage data collection as programs may feel developing such processes are unnecessary at their current scale. Of course, programs will, hopefully, grow to serve a larger and larger segment of the incarcerated population and programs will need to plan now for that scaling. Developing data collection protocols that account for cell size, privacy, and scalability will be essential to have in place before Pell funding returns in July 2023.

Our engagements with the research community over the life of this project also highlighted a surprising bottleneck in conducting research on HEP: Institutional Review Boards. Given the history of exploitation of people in prison, they have been afforded special protections under the Common Rule; however, members of IRBs often lack understanding of how research is actually conducted in prisons and can inhibit research that would lead to better practices and outcomes for people in prison. This can, in fact, cause harm to people in prison which is the opposite of the rule’s intent. Additionally, IRBs are often ill equipped to evaluate participatory research models, common in the field, as maintaining the divide between researcher and subject is typically what an IRB is meant to enforce. Together this can mean that IRBsstand as a major obstacle to conducting research that would lead to positive improvements for people in prison, so educating IRBs on the best practices and ethics of HEP research is needed.

Finally, Departments of Corrections must be brought on board as research partners. This is, perhaps, the preeminent challenge for the field and there are no easy solutions. HEP programs themselves rely on relationships of trust built over years of collaboration, but, excepting longitudinal studies, years of trust building is not often practical for any single research project. Instead, both DOCs and HEP programs must become habituated to research and evaluation as a normal corollary to educational programming. As the rules established by the Department of Education to guide the restoration of Pell funding for students in prison vest DOCs as the “oversight entities” responsible for ensuring HEP programs are of quality and operate in the best interests of students, it is possible that correctional agencies will become more supportive of research on HEP as a part of their oversight responsibilities. ⁵. Indeed, to fulfill this function as intended, correctional agencies will need to be informed by research on best practices, appropriate metrics, and standards, which can only be produced through a willingness to collaborate with the research community. The burden of ensuring effective collaboration likely cannot rest on DOCs and researchers alone, but will instead rely on significant facilitation by HEP programs, funders, government agencies, and other third parties (such as the growing number of state coalitions for higher education in prisons).

Conclusion

As students, educators, advocates, and corrections officials plan for the reinstatement of Pell funding, action must be taken now to ensure that this historic opportunity is not wasted. Sustained access to quality educational opportunities for people in prison cannot rest on the shifting sands of political good will, but must instead be based upon a shared recognition of the humanity, dignity, and potential of the people we incarcerate. High quality, ethical research will be essential to building an encompassing narrative about the value and impact of higher education in prison, to those who are incarcerated, their families, communities, and society at large. Advancing such a broad, but critical research agenda will take committed support from all stakeholders, from the academy itself, departments of corrections, as well as a constellation of funders willing to support and facilitate its development.