Formerly Incarcerated Scholars expose systemic barriers to higher education and demand structural reform in rehabilitation policies
Original framing: “UW Formerly Incarcerated Scholars discuss access, rehabilitation” — bing news
The U.S. has a long history of using incarceration to control marginalised populations, from convict leasing post-Civil War to the War on Drugs’ disproportionate targeting of Black and Latino communities. The 1994 crime bill’s elimination of Pell Grants for incarcerated students created a generation denied education, a policy only partially reversed in 2020. Indigenous boarding schools and the criminalisation of Indigenous resistance (e.g., AIM) further illustrate how education and punishment have been weaponised against oppressed groups.
The UW panel’s focus on 'access to rehabilitation' through higher education inadvertently mirrors the neoliberal carceral state’s logic, where marginalised individuals must prove their worth to be deemed worthy of basic rights.
This framing obscures the historical continuity of racial capitalism, from convict leasing to the War on Drugs, which has systematically denied education to Black, Indigenous, and Latino communities. Indigenous and Afro-descendant restorative justice models offer a radical alternative, but they are often co-opted by institutions that prioritise individual 'rehabilitation' over collective liberation. The trickster here is the university itself—a gatekeeper that profits from exclusion while positioning itself as a saviour. True systemic change requires dismantling the prison-industrial complex, reinvesting in community-led education, and centring the voices of those most impacted by carceral harm. Only then can higher education become a tool for justice rather than a band-aid for systemic violence.