We know that many prospective students don’t apply to colleges or universities after encountering questions about an applicant’s criminal history. They assume there’s no hope, no way forward. And this is just one of the countless obstacles that block incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people from receiving the education that they need. Barring people in prison from access to higher education because their sentences are too long, or barring them from the financial aid, technology, or internet required to engage in educational pursuits—these are all part of the criminal justice landscape.

We know that there’s an inverse relationship between recidivism and education. A Texas study found that while systemwide recidivism was 43.3 percent, for people who achieved a bachelor’s degree, that rate fell to 5.6 percent, and for those with master’s degrees, it was less than one percent. The Center for Prison Education, reporting national figures, estimates that taking college courses in prison reduces the likelihood of recidivism by 43 percent.

Everything we do at Operation Restoration is done through the lens of prison abolition, the goal that inspires our work. The US prison system was created by and for affluent white men. Even before it became a primary apparatus for disenfranchising and extracting labor from incarcerated people, especially Black people, it was never designed to serve people of color, poor people, or women and girls. But alongside the overarching goal of abolition, fundamental changes—like access to higher education—can happen within the system and, indeed, are intrinsic to dismantling it.

A big part of our work is breaking down policy barriers. Our organization—with the support of other formerly incarcerated women—wrote the language and advocated for Act 276, which Governor John Bel Edwards signed into law in 2017, making Louisiana the first state in the nation to “ban the box” in higher education admissions. We’ve helped remove the question from college applications in six other states, and we to remove the box from the Common Application for higher education.

Read the full article about education and mass incarceration by Syrita Steib at Nonprofit Quarterly.