Prison Education May Raise Risk of Reincarceration

"Prison education programs are designed to help people succeed after release, but new research suggests they may actually increase participants' chances of reincarceration. An analysis from Grinnell College found that participation in prison education increases an individual's likelihood of returning to prison within three years of release by 3.4 percentage points-a roughly 10 percent increase compared to those who did not participate. That increase is driven largely by revocations, such as technical violations of release conditions, rather than by new crimes."

"The research found that participation in prison education programs affects how individuals are released. Those who enroll in college courses are less likely to be released free and clear and more likely to be assigned to work release, which allows eligible inmates to leave prison during the day to work in the community and return at night. In Iowa, work release often takes place in a halfway house, a structured living environment intended to support people as they transition back into the community."

"The analysis examined more than 22,000 prisoner stints in Iowa, drawing on data from the Iowa Department of Corrections, the Iowa Department of Education, Iowa Workforce Development and Grinnell College to create a comprehensive, individual-level dataset of people released from Iowa prisons between 2014 and 2018. "The takeaway from this should not be that prison education is bad," said Logan Lee, an associate professor of economics at Grinnell and the study's author. "Instead, what seems to be happening is that there are these unintended consequences.""

Participation in prison education increased an individual's likelihood of returning to prison within three years of release by 3.4 percentage points, roughly a 10 percent increase. That increase was driven largely by revocations, such as technical violations of release conditions, rather than by new crimes. Data covering more than 22,000 prisoner stints in Iowa from 2014 to 2018 were combined from corrections, education, workforce, and college sources to create a comprehensive individual-level dataset. Enrollment in college courses correlated with fewer releases free and clear and more assignments to work release, which brings more intensive supervision and higher revocation risk.

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