Arkansas lawmaker wants $1M to pay for inmates' college courses

A state senator said Monday that she will make an attempt during this fiscal session to seek $1 million to add to an effort to enroll state inmates in higher education programs.

During a meeting Monday of the Legislative Black Caucus, Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, said she would file legislation later this week to budget $1 million to state prison and parole agencies to get more "transitioning" offenders being held in state prisons and parole facilities into college-level courses before they are released. Chesterfield heads the caucus.

"I may get kicked in the teeth, but I'll keep trying," Chesterfield said. "This is a bipartisan issue. We know we need to cut the recidivism rate and move people from incarceration to work."

According to a report submitted to legislators last year, Arkansas' prison-population growth rate leads the nation.

The boom -- prompted in part by a series of changes in parole policies aimed at cracking down on lawbreaking parolees -- has resulted in 16,334 inmates in state facilities as of Monday, well above the system's 15,157-bed capacity. County jails hold another 1,038 state inmates awaiting an opening in a state prison.

Arkansas Community Correction officials say that the state's three-year recidivism rate is about 44 percent, the highest it's been since 2002.

The growth in inmate populations has probation and parole administrators seeking ways to keep released inmates from returning.

On Monday, the head of Arkansas Community Correction, Sheila Sharp, told lawmakers that her agency is set on trying to expand educational opportunities for the roughly 54,000 Arkansans who are under some form of state supervision.

"We know that education is critical. We have around 66 percent of our population that have their [GED diplomas], but not many above that have higher education," she said. "We know that statistics show that once you reach a master's degree, recidivism drops to almost nothing. With any type of college education ... that [recidivism] number goes down. We know how critical that is."

Chesterfield's proposed $1 million would be in addition to existing efforts to help offenders obtain some higher education.

Sharp's agency is working with Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock to get some parolees college-course credit. The agency also is working with Shorter College in North Little Rock on a similar effort.

Shorter College President Jerome Green told lawmakers Monday that the college is looking to federal Pell grants as a funding source for educating offenders.

Since 1994, federal and state prisoners have been ineligible to receive Pell grants, which are aimed at helping poorer Americans pay for college without having to repay the cost of the grant.

But last year, the federal Department of Education announced that a change in rules would allow some prisoners eligibility for Pell grant assistance as part of its pilot "Second Chance" program.

Shorter College and Arkansas State University are the only Arkansas schools that have applied for authorization from the federal government to pay for prisoners' post-secondary coursework. Green's school has worked with youth offenders to get them college hours and said the authorization for adult offenders, if granted, could take several more months.

Deputy Director Kevin Murphy of Community Correction said that with or without the Pell grants, the agency's aim is to give as many inmates as possible a taste of higher education and show them that they can be successful either by working toward a vocational certification or an associate degree.

"The big deal is building their confidence," he said. "We want to get them the basics. ... We want them to get some confidence so they can say, 'Hey, I can do this. I may not have done well in high school, but I can do this.'"

Metro on 04/26/2016

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