Bowie State Hosts Nation’s First HBCU Jail Schooling Summit

In an effort to construct a prison-to-HBCU pipeline, Bowie State College final weekend hosted the nation’s first HBCU Jail Schooling Summit, bringing collectively instructional leaders, felony justice consultants, and neighborhood advocates.

Summit leaders structured the three-day occasion below its inaugural theme, “Constructing A Jail-to-HBCU Pipeline.” In response to the occasion’s webpage, the summit referred to as on HBCUs to contain their group of directors, college, workers, policymakers, funders, neighborhood companions, and reentry advocates within the motion to determine a community that gives incarcerated and formally incarcerated with alternatives for greater schooling, reentry companies, and private {and professional} improvement.

Attendees had been immersed with knowledgeable data and sources for constructing jail education schemes. “By constructing this community, we intention to empower HBCUs to raised serve our neighborhood by means of jail schooling, to advance racial fairness for Black individuals, to make use of entry to greater schooling to create pathways for upward mobility, cut back recidivism, and break the cycle of incarceration,” the summit’s mission assertion learn. “Our mantra is, educate to liberate and vow to remodel (ELVT) the lives of our individuals and thus all individuals.”

This 12 months’s summit goals included constructing partnerships and collaborative conversations by means of constructive discussions amongst educators, advocates, neighborhood organizations, policymakers, and stakeholders; sharing sources, finest practices, analysis findings, and modern approaches to leverage collective experience and keep up to date on the most recent developments; and fostering social justice and empowering change brokers. Resulting from systemic inequalities, Black women and men are disproportionately incarcerated in the USA. In March, a report by the Jail Coverage Initiative revealed that 37% of individuals in jail or jail are Black. Researchers have discovered that entry to schooling improves life possibilities and social and financial mobility.

Bowie State’s Felony Justice Division Chair and Govt Director of the Jail Schooling Program, Dr. Charles Adams, advised WBAL that the establishment is one in every of 4 in Maryland to supply jail schooling. “We all know as we shift from mass incarceration with discovering methods to take care of returning residents, now we have to offer sources, and one of many essential sources is schooling,” he stated. In a press launch, Adams revealed that the establishment is within the third 12 months of its Second Likelihood Pell Grant program, launched in 2022, to advance jail schooling. “HBCUs can’t do that alone. By coming collectively, we strengthen our affect and improve our capacity to safe sources to fulfill incarcerated residents the place they’re and higher put together them for potential jobs when they’re launched again into the neighborhood,” stated Adams. 

Over 200 company from HBCUs, the felony justice system, and different organizations gathered in Bowie, Maryland, to attend the inaugural HBCU Jail Schooling Summit. The college plans to host the summit once more subsequent 12 months.

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