OILING THE REVOLVING DOOR

The American prison system will release more than 600,000 prisoners
this year - and half will commit new crimes and be back in prison
three years from now. There is at least one proven way to break the
cycle. Researchers have discovered and rediscovered that inmates who
earn college degrees tend to stay out of jail. But former offenders
have found it increasingly hard to educate themselves and gear up for
productive lives since Congress began to cut them off from federal
education aid in the 1990's.

Congress may be ready to consider at least a half-step back from that
mistake. Lawmakers may not be prepared to revisit the federal ban that
made convicted felons ineligible for Pell grants, the federal tuition
aid aimed primarily at poor and middle-income students. But the House
of Representatives is at least talking about changing the 1998 law
under which more than 140,000 students have been turned down for
federal student loans because of drug offenses, some of which are
minor and a decade old.

The law was not supposed to work this way. According to Representative
Mark Souder, the Indiana Republican who wrote the measure, it was
aimed only at students who committed drug crimes while receiving
federal loans. But the law has instead been applied to every applicant
with a drug conviction, even if the conviction was so minor as to
carry no jail time, and even if it occurred long before the student
ever envisioned going to college. Mr. Souder has put forth a revised
version of the law that would return to his original intent. That
would be an improvement, but student aid should still not be turned
into a law enforcement weapon, particularly for those convicted of
minor offenses that a court would appropriately dismiss with a fine or
probation. Congress should repeal this law instead of just tinkering
with it. Beyond that, the country needs to back away from all policies
that prevent ex-convicts from attending college, because college is
the one sure way to get them back into the mainstream and keep them
out of jail.