If there’s an argument against giving Pell grants to prisoners that particularly galls Education Secretary Arne Duncan, it’s the suggestion by some Republicansthat the Obama administration is taking money intended for hard-working students and giving it to criminals.
“Having an inmate receive Pell grants doesn’t take a nickel from anybody else,” Duncan told me in a phone interview on Wednesday. “This never pits one group over another, and it’s not robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s just trying to have a few more people have access to what could be a life-chance-forming opportunity.”
Last week, alongside Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Duncan appeared at a prison in Maryland to announce the launch of a pilot program that would make a limited number of inmates eligible for federal college aid while they’re still in jail. Congress banned Pell grants for prisoners in 1994, but the administration is relying on a provision of the Higher Education Act to resume the practice on a trial basis. The idea—backed by a 2013 Rand Corporation study that found prisoner education is a cost-effective way to reduce recidivism—is one that has bipartisan support.
[For more of this story, written by Russell Berman, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...ts-prisoners/400565/]
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