Opinion: Invest in educational opportunities for justice-involved students
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Jesús Reyes-Velardo is associate director of Academic Support Programs at College & Community Fellowship. Photo via College & Community Fellowship.
By Jesús Reyes-Velardo
A prospective college student who finds their way to my office is at best cautiously hopeful. They arrive beat down by a system that is rigged against their success. This disheartening truth is the reality for millions of Americans in search of opportunity but struggling to surmount the endless systemic barriers before them. My role is to help eliminate those obstacles.
As students across the country return to a COVID-19 college experience with new and unexpected challenges, one group of prospective students will face these challenges on top of existing roadblocks that make accessing higher education even more burdensome: people with criminal justice-involvement.
As many as one in three Americans have had some involvement with the criminal legal system. This startling statistic points to a flawed system that only works to hinder people with criminal histories from achieving any modicum of success. Upon completing their sentence, they continue to be shackled to a lifetime of collateral consequences that severely limits their ability to succeed. How can we expect anyone to survive, much less thrive, when they don’t have access to the tools they need?
To answer the aforementioned question, we must first invest in opportunities that bridge this gap. Access to higher education is a key step in this equation. For justice-involved people, earning a college degree provides the critical thinking skills to reflect on their experiences, increase employability and generate a wealth of opportunity to create individual and systemic change. Not only that, but It also nurtures self worth - a pivotal ingredient in generating self-efficacy.
However, despite recent policy shifts to restore Pell Grants for people in prison and decrease the impact a criminal record has upon release, the education barriers faced by people with criminal histories continue to be a major deterrent to success.
A 2019 study showed that a majority of public and private colleges require prospective students to answer questions on criminal justice history as part of their admissions process. Studies show that this practice doesn’t just keep justice-involved people out of higher education, it even deters justice-involved students from finishing the application process at all.
Moreover, the over representation of Black and Brown people in the criminal legal system unquestionable links these barriers to issues of racial equity. This inequity is exacerbated by the fact that our criminal justice system disproportionately affects low income people - especially people of color - while offering leniency to those whose socioeconomic status can grant them access to the right tools.
Without community-based programs and support, jumping over these barriers to access higher education, build a better life, and pass that success on to future generations is a nearly insurmountable feat. If we are to interrupt the cycle of incarceration for impacted communities, we cannot close the few opportunities for personal and professional advancement available to them, nor can we put a stop to or limit the services that support their journeys.
We want scores of ready, willing and able people to strengthen the country we’re all working to build in a post-pandemic world. Now more than ever, we must break down the barriers to higher education by investing in community-based programs that go beyond supporting basic needs. It’s the only way to guarantee vulnerable populations are not punished, yet again, after their sentences are finished.
Jesús Reyes-Velardo is the associate director of Academic Support Programs at College & Community Fellowship, a non-profit that helps justice-involved women earn their college degrees, build careers and create change.
