Research indicates that providing post-secondary opportunities for incarcerated individuals is cost-effective, reduces recidivism, improves employment prospects, increases civic engagement, and can disrupt generational poverty. Higher education professionals are focused on learning and correctional agencies are focused on security. Building a bridge between the two can present challenges. Overcoming these challenges requires a meeting of the minds and the agreement of a common purpose. Dr. Lopez and Past the Edges team members have a foot in both worlds and have successfully implemented over 20 college and university programs with a variety of completion outcomes (i.e., degree, certification, credits, personal edification) while maintaining facility safety.

Whether you are a higher education or a correctional professional, ways in which we can help build this important bridge in creating and/or improving correctional higher education programming include:

• Finding local and/or national higher education partnerships for credit-bearing and non-credit-bearing postsecondary programs

• Collaborating with correctional staff to understand and create appropriate security protocols for post-secondary instructors/contractors and with post-secondary staff to understand the needs of instructors and students, then

  • Preparing/training university/college instructors for teaching in a secure environment

  • Preparing/training correctional staff on the importance of post-secondary education programming for incarcerated individuals and facility protocols around student participation

• Assistance with

  • Training facility staff member(s) to serve as an on-site coordinator and point of contact for the university/college

  • Student recruitment and selection (either drafting a plan and/or performing on-site recruitment and selection services)

  • Fusing post-secondary programs with the complexities of correctional schedules is challenging and requires multi-layered communication and meticulous organization. We can help work through these complexities by serving as a liaison between institutions to create an effective schedule of post-secondary courses.

  • Site preparation (i.e., adequate and engaging learning environment, tech set-up, etc)

  • Preparing job descriptions for on-site coordinators, education officers, and any other pertinent positions

  • Drafting/revising policy

  • Drafting procedural manuals, correctional and post-secondary staff guides, and student orientation guides/materials

  • Creating a roadmap for post-secondary partners on security processes and policy

• Evaluating program effectiveness (also see our Research section)

  • student outcomes

  • post-release follow-up

  • institutional safety