The Prison Explosion, Part 3b

INMATE COLLEGE PROGRAMS NOW RARE

Bobby Lane has a job, a wife, a house in the country -- and a life that was
unimaginable not so long ago, when he was serving time for murder in a
state prison.

"I consider myself no longer a prisoner of despair," says Lane, 45, of
Wallkill in Orange County. "I'm a prisoner of hope."

Paroled in 1997, Lane works as a substance abuse counselor for the
Volunteers of America in the Bronx. He credits his success -- New York
Mayor Rudy Giuliani recently pointed to him as an inspiration for others --
to a prison program that allowed him to earn a college degree.

"My position is that education plays a very important role in a person's
growth and development,'' he said. "It gives them something to work with on
their release. How much can you do with a (general equivalency diploma) or
high school diploma these days?"

Eddie Ellis spent 25 years in prison, during which he earned a bachelor's
degree from Marist College and a master's degree from the New York
Theological Seminary. Today he is president of the Community Justice Center
in Harlem, which helps ex-offenders find jobs and housing.

To people who say convicted murderers don't deserve to be educated, he
says, "That's a very short-sighted, narrow-minded and self-serving
argument." Why? Because most are ultimately released, and "People who
acquire education are less likely to become recidivists."

Gary Riley of Poughkeepsie was denied parole twice -- and he has no regrets.

Those four extra years in state prison, of a total of eight, helped him
complete his associate's and bachelor's degree programs, allaying his fears
that as an ex-felon he would be unable to support himself on release.

"Funny as it may seem, for me, prison was a blessing,'' he said. College
instructors ''inspired me. They really made me see this is something I
could do when I got home."

He now works locally in a professional capacity, where his past is known,
but he is judged on his current abilities.

Since 1991, 4,600 inmates have graduated from college prison programs. But
the number dropped drastically in the mid-1990s, when both state and
federal governments eliminated grants to prisoners for college education.

Marist College, which once ran programs in several area prisons, runs none.
Dutchess Community College runs a much smaller program than it previously
did, using private foundation money.

Formerly, the government grants provided about $2,500 to $3,800 annually
per inmate, officials of those programs said, enough to provide faculty
members for several major fields of study. The program was relatively
inexpensive because overhead -- the prison facility -- was cheap, they said.

Nonetheless, "While possession of a college degree may contribute to a
lower recidivism rate, the general public does not want tax dollars paying
for inmates to attend college," Commissioner Glenn Goord wrote last April.

"I had to work and do whatever I had to do to get my children through
college," said Dennis Fitzpatrick, a retired sergeant and public relations
director for the correction officers union. "Now giving a multi-felon the
same opportunity, I don't think it's fair."

Ironically, prison administrators supported the programs for their ability
to help manage prisoners, said officials involved in the programs.

"It's a powerful force for peace and quiet," said the Rev. George W.
Webber, director of the New York Theological Seminary Prison Program, which
awards master's degrees.

"The college programs were occupying a lot of the best, more motivated
inmates who also have the tendency to cause the most difficulty," said
Timothy Decker, who managed the Dutchess Community College program, the
state's first, for seven years.

In a 1997 report, the Center on Crime, Communities & Culture, a nonprofit
advocacy group, concluded, "The more education received, the less likely an
individual is to be re-arrested and re-imprisoned."

It cited studies in five states that showed much lower return-to-prison
rates among higher-educated inmates, including New York.

In the New York study, published in 1991, researchers for the Department of
Correctional Services found that 45 percent of those without degrees
returned in four years, against 26 percent of those with degrees.

And in another study, the Center for Social Research found in 1997 that 9
percent of graduates of the New York Theological Seminary masters program
were re-arrested within 28 months, compared to 37 percent of people who did
not go through the program. (The privately funded program is one of the few
surviving but will soon run out of candidates with bachelor's degrees,
administrators said.)

"Post-secondary correctional education is one way to turn around the
'runaway train' of corrections," researcher Jon M. Taylor wrote in the
Journal of Correctional Education.

Taylor calculated that recidivism costs in 1992 dropped from $1.3 million
for every 100 inmates without a college education to $387,000 for every 100
with a degree, an $18 billion national savings.

For now, a handful of small undergraduate programs continues to operate --
Dutchess Community College at Green Haven, a program run by the Consortium
of the Niagara Frontier at three upstate prisons, and a Bedford Hills
program in Westchester County for women. In all, 70 inmates got degrees
last year.

That's a far cry from 1995, when at least two dozen colleges participated
in the program and 592 degrees were awarded.

"These people get out," said Ilene Bull, who directed the Marist program.
"What is the impact on a family when you have someone who has a college
degree versus someone who has been on welfare all their lives?"