Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Monday that the White House will take advantage of a loophole in the 1994 law that banned incarcerated Americans from using Pell Grants to pay for college, “developing experimental sites that will make Pell grants available” to prisoners.
This move, which has long had the backing of philanthropists and lawmakers, will be announced Friday with the staff of the Goucher College Prison Education Program in Jessup, Maryland. After three to five years of data-gathering, Democrats and the White House hope that the ban will be completely eliminated. (Previous data gathered by the Three State Recidivism Study and the RAND Corporation suggests that college educations are cost-saving measures that significantly reduce re-offence and re-incarceration.)
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