Correctional Education gives prisoners a second chance
For 50 years, this Carolina program has transformed thousands of lives through the power of learning.
At the 50th anniversary celebration for Carolina’s Correctional Education program, former prisoner Brian Scott shared with the audience in the Friday Center how the program had changed his life. Scott began taking classes a year into his 20-year sentence at Nash Correctional Institution and now runs OurJourney, a nonprofit to help others make the transition to life outside prison walls.
“I didn’t just become a better student because of the Friday Center. I didn’t just become a better learner,” he said. “I became a better person because of the Friday Center and the educational opportunities made available to me by the prison system.”
Founded in 1974, the Correctional Education program began as a reading group at Central Prison led by Brick Oettinger ‘64. In partnership with the N.C. Department of Adult Correction, the program, based in the Friday Center, has served thousands of prisoners at every state prison in North Carolina and other correctional institutions.
A privilege to learn
Each year about 500 students participate in the program, taking college-level general education courses in biology, history, English, communications and more.
Participation in the program is a privilege. Half the students attend in-person classes at one of six correctional institutions while the other half does the work through old-fashioned written correspondence. Prisoners have no access to the internet and only limited access to computers.
For Scott, that meant studying after a full day of work at the prison print shop and trying to do research in a library largely stocked with romance novels and a 1970s-era encyclopedia. But he loved his classes, especially history. “The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn,” he said.
“These are collegiate classes. They are rigorous. They earn credit. They do not get a degree, but we hope that a lot of them will transfer into community colleges or get further education when they exit,” says Lisa Kukla, Correctional Education program director. “We offer the best prison education in the country, and they are the best students. They are engaged. They are ready to learn.”
Critical thinking
Ariannah Kubli, a Carolina doctoral student who teaches in-person classes to incarcerated students, called it a “wonderful experience for me as an instructor.” She chose Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” for her English students, partly because it’s a pop-culture staple. But the students also immediately grasped the bigger theme of bad decisions and their consequences.
“When the discussion arrived at that, they could all relate. It had relevance for their own lives,” Kubli said. “In class, they have the opportunity to write and think through these things and apply it to their own circumstances.”
Support for correctional education in general ebbs and flows, based on politics. But the program perseveres because it gets results.
“This program engages incarcerated people in positive learning activities, improves the behavior of participants and helps them to learn how to think critically,” said Brooke Wheeler, the adult corrections department’s superintendent of education services. “Further, this valuable resource changes the lives of those involved, as well as the lives of their families.”
Giving prisoners this educational opportunity also improves the communities that they return to, said Kukla, who estimates that 70% of those now incarcerated will be released at some point.
“I left prison as a better person,” said Scott, released in 2021. “Today, I get to be a part of the solution through the nonprofit that I’m a part of. I can draw a direct line back to taking these classes in terms of preparing me for what I’m doing now on the outside and giving back.”
