33. Support formerly incarcerated and justice-impacted students in admissions through college completion

Admissions 09.6.24

Here’s what the federal government can do:

  • The U.S. Department of Education should share best practices for higher education institutions to remove criminal history questions from their admissions process.
  • The U.S. Department of Education should collect, conduct, and disseminate research on the percentage of applicants denied admissions based on reported criminal history, whether as a child or adult.
  • The U.S. Department of Education should ensure that higher education institutions and departments of corrections have access to and an understanding of best practices to support justice-impacted students.

Here’s what state government can do:

  • State legislatures should require higher education institutions to remove criminal history questions from their admissions process.
  • States legislatures should provide justice-impacted individuals access to state financial aid programs.
  • State legislatures should provide funding to higher education institutions to develop an academic support program to serve formerly incarcerated students and justice impacted students.

Here’s what institutional leaders can do:

  • Higher education institutions should remove criminal history questions in their admissions process.
  • Higher education institutions and departments of corrections should ensure that justice-impacted students have access to support services that help them apply for financial aid and understand the admissions and enrollment process.
  • Higher education institutions should provide technology and internet access for justice-impacted students who are incarcerated.
  • Higher education institutions should ensure that justice-impacted students have access to campus support services such as wellness, housing, and food security programs.
  • Higher education institutions should build advisory boards dedicated to support for justice-impacted students.

It is critical for policymakers to invest in higher education pathways for formerly incarcerated and justice-impacted individuals. Many justice-impacted people are first-generation students, parents, students with disabilities, students of color, and/or students with lower incomes.[i] In 2020, the Common Application, used by more than 900 colleges, removed questions about criminal history.[ii] All higher education institutions, including those who do not use the Common Application, should remove questions about criminal history from their admissions process.

In July 2023, 760,000 students who were incarcerated became eligible for Pell Grants to support their participation in prison education programs (PEPs).[iii] However, many states continue to exclude students impacted by the criminal-legal system from accessing financial aid. In 2020, students impacted by the criminal-legal system were considered ineligible for 54 of the 100 largest state aid programs.[iv] The U.S. Department of Education released related information in 2023 on strategies to support students impacted by the criminal-legal system.[v]

Higher education institutions should support justice-impacted students beyond financial aid and offer opportunities to obtain meaningful higher education, such as academic advising, mental health counseling, or job placement programs. The Berkley Underground Scholars (BUS) program was started in Spring 2013 by formerly incarcerated and justice-impacted students at UC Berkeley. The program has received state and institutional funding to have a dedicated office space and to hire staff, including transfer coordinators and formerly incarcerated students.

Black and Latinx people are overrepresented at every stage of the criminal-legal system from racially biased policing practices, including over-surveillance and harsher sentencing outcomes than white individuals for similar conduct. For example, young Black men between 18 and 19 years of age are 12 times more likely to be imprisoned than white men of the same age, and Black women are imprisoned at twice the rate of white women.[vi] The overrepresentation of Black people in the criminal-legal system is not explained by racial differences in participation in criminalized behavior, but rather by structural discrimination and racism at the root of the criminal-legal system.[vii] For example, while Black and Latinx people use drugs at similar rates as other people,[viii] nearly 80 percent of people in federal prison and almost 60 percent of people in state prison for drug offenses are Black or Latinx[ix] while making up only 31 percent of the population.[x] There are nearly 2.3 million justice-impacted individuals in jails, prisons, and detention centers across the United States.[xi]

For more information on community-centered investments and public safety, see Vision For Justice.

[i]“Pell Is Not Enough: Exploring the Experiences of Participants in Second Chance Pell,” October 2022. https://cherp.utah.edu/_resources/documents/publications/upep_brief11.pdf.

[ii]“Beyond the Box 2023,” U.S. Department of Education Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education, April 2023. https://lincs.ed.gov/sites/default/files/2023-04/beyond-the-box.pdf.

[iii]“U.S. Department of Education to Launch Application Process to Expand Federal Pell Grant Access for Individuals Who Are Confined or Incarcerated,” U.S. Department of Education, June 30, 2023. https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-launch-application-process-expand-federal-pell-grant-access-individuals-who-are-confined-or-incarcerated.

[iv]“State Financial Aid Barriers for Students Impacted By The Justice System,” Commission of the States. https://www.ecs.org/wp-content/uploads/State-Financial-Aid-Barriers-for-Students-Impacted-by-the-Justice-System.pdf.

[v]Ibid.

[vi]Holman, Shon; Jackson, Victoria; Taylor, Satra; & Walsh, Brian; “The Promise of a Higher Education Should Be Open to All-Even Those in Prison,” The Education Trust, October 2020. https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/The-Promise-of-a-Higher-Education-Should-Be-Open-to-All-Even-Those-In-Prison-October-21-2020.pdf.

[vii]Pierson, Emma, et al. “A Large-Scale Analysis of Racial Disparities in Police Stops Across the United States,” Nature Human Behavior. 2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0858-1 (analyzing data showing that police search Black and Latino drivers more often than white drivers but are less likely to turn up contraband during searches of Black and Latino drivers compared to searches of white drivers); Nembard, Susan; & Robin, Lily. “Racial and Ethnic Disparities Throughout the Criminal Legal System: A Result of Racist Policies and Discretionary Practices,” The Urban Institute. August 18, 2021. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/104687/racial-and-ethnic-disparities-throughout-the-criminal-legal-system.pdf (citing multiple studies also showing the racial disparities in the criminal legal system cannot be explained by differences in criminality between racial groups, but instead can be explained by racial bias); “A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform,” American Civil Liberties Union, 2020. https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/marijuanareport_03232021.pdf (citing data showing that Black people are 3.6 times as likely to get arrested for marijuana possession than white people, despite similar usage rates).

[viii]Whitmore Schanzenback, Diane et al., “Twelve Facts about Incarceration and Prisoner Reentry,” The Hamilton Project, October 2016. https://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/files/12_facts_about_incarceration_prisoner_reentry.pdf.

[ix]“The Drug War, Mass Incarceration and Race,” Drug Policy Alliance. 2015. https://www.unodc.org/documents/ungass2016/Contributions/Civil/DrugPolicyAlliance/DPA_Fact_Sheet_Drug_War_Mass_Incarceration_and_Race_June2015.pdf.

[x]“2020 Census Illuminates Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Country,” U.S. Census Bureau, 2021. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/improved-race-ethnicity-measures-reveal-united-states-population-much-more-multiracial.html.

[xi]“Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2024,” Prison Policy Initiative, March 14, 2024. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html.