Bringing education back to America's inmates
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on Monday endorsed a legislative effort backed by evangelical prison ministry Prison Fellowship to make incarcerated inmates eligible to receive federal grants for higher education.
DeVos spoke at Prison Fellowship’s Justice Declaration Symposium at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., and encouraged the group of about 80 church leaders to lobby congressional offices to support bills that would reverse a longstanding ban on inmates receiving Pell Grants.
Pell Grants are federal subsidies to help low-income students pursue higher education or vocational training. But since the passage of “tough on crime” policies in 1994, incarcerated Americans have mostly been blocked from receiving those grants.
