Volunteer teacher Austin Dannhaus works with Jairo, an inmate who didn't want his last name used.Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
California's San Quentin State Prison north of San Francisco is one of few prisons in the nation to offer a college education to inmates. Here's a look at the Prison University Project behind the prison walls.
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Rewriting the Sentence: College Behind Bars
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September 8, 2016
The Prison University Project offers higher education classes to about 350 students at San Quentin State Prison outside of San Francisco. Although college classes once were fairly common in the nation's prisons, cutbacks in federal financial support have eliminated many programs. In California, many inmates transfer to San Quentin specifically to enroll in the project, whose waitlist is almost six months long.
Most students start in the program's college preparatory classes in math and English, but they study humanities, social sciences, and science as well. They eventually can earn Associates of Arts degrees.
Photographer Elisabeth Fall recently spent time chronicling the program and its enrollees.
Prison University Project classes are held in a cluster of trailers on the edge of San Quentin's prison yard.
Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
Inmate Clarence Long said, "Now I understand that education is power. ... My education is for me. If I don't never get out, I'm still going to get my education."
Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
Faculty member Austin Dannhaus leads a college prep English class on composition. The Prison University Project faculty are all volunteers.
Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
Inmate Anthony Anderson holds the essay he wrote, addressing future students in the program's English classes. "Take pride in getting an education," he wrote. "You will have something to offer to society. Who knows you may be the next big thing in literature."
Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
James Wortham, incarcerated for 31 years for a murder committed when he was 19, sits in a college prep English class. "I have a lot of people counting on me and I want to do the right thing and not let them down ... I'm educating myself because I don't want to go out there [as] I came in. I don't want to be the same way, because I would behave the same way."
Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
Most of the work in the program gets done in pen and ink. As a group, prison inmates have, on average, dramatically lower levels of academic attainment than the general population. Thirty-seven percent of people in state prisons didn't finish high school, compared with 19 percent of the general population. More than half of the general population has at least some postsecondary education; only 14 percent of state prison inmates do.
Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
An inmate flips through a well-used paperback. Most students in the program dropped out of high school between ninth and 11th grade and then completed a GED in prison.
Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
Volunteer teacher Austin Dannhaus works with inmate student Sydney Johnson. "I feel I don't speak articulate enough," says Johnson. "That's another reason why I want to go to college. So I can learn to better speak."
Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
Inmate Timothy Hicks stands with an essay he wrote for college prep English class.
Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
Inmate Sydney Johnson holds up an essay he wrote for English class. "I just completed my second essay ever and I really learned how to structure my writing paragraphs here. It's really been a learning experience for me, how to express my words, and how to create a story."
Elisabeth Fall for APM Reports
