Higher Education is a Human Right

the honor of taking this stage

represents a culmination of events that

i will always reflect on

as a capstone to the first half of my

life because when i graduated last may

the previous three years that it took to

reach that point were all part of a

rebuilding process

in which i worked a series of hard

manual labor jobs

while starting a family

so unlike most of the graduates in the

class of 2020 who i

imagine were disappointed by the news

that in-person graduations would need to

be canceled due to the pandemic

when i got my degree in the mail held it

in my hands

and posted a picture of it to social

media all i felt was a tremendous shower

of relief

see i was born into a family of

educators and knew by the time i started

school

that i was expected to earn a college

degree my grandfather was the principal

at elementary school that i attended

my favorite aunt had a long career as

principal and my sister

is currently carrying on this family

tradition so

after graduating high school i followed

in the footsteps of several family

members

and was accepted at fisk university in

nashville tennessee

where i completed two years of

enrollment but

ultimately my goal of obtaining a

college degree was derailed

and before i became a college graduate i

survived a total of 12 years

nine months and six days of time in

prison which is exactly 85 percent

of a 15-year census that i got from my

participation in the robbery in 2003

fortunately no one was physically hurt

during the commission of the crimes that

i was convicted and sentenced for

but the psychological trauma that i

caused to the victims in my case

and to myself cannot be quantified

but in the last 18 months of my sentence

i got lucky

when the state shackled me and changed

my wrists to my ankles

and around my waist and shipped me to

the missouri eastern correctional center

initially i only considered the transfer

to mbcc a stroke of luck

because it’s close to st louis because

to that point

i had mostly been caged in places that

were a minimum of two hours away from

home

this made it harder for me to get visits

from the few people who were willing to

make the drive

at any rate after i got there i found

out that you had recently established a

prison education project

pep is a higher education and prison

program

that offers credit bearing courses and a

degree program to both the staff

and the people who are locked up

obtaining access to such a high quality

higher education opportunity

prior to and immediately after my

release not only saved my life

but also made it possible for me to

rebuild it

in the first decade in my sentence i

accumulated over a dozen certificates

for taking classes offered by the state

but i knew that pep would be completely

different because

those classes aren’t likely to be

leveraged for anything after release

and even the missouri parole board knows

it in some instances

they could be bought on the yard for

cigarettes or stamps i know this because

they suggested that i might have gotten

some of mine like that during my first

parole here

in any case because i grew up in saint

louis right off the bat

i was profoundly aware of the value of

an education from ysu

but i had no idea how few programs like

pep exist throughout the country

in fact it is a major understatement to

say

that i was lucky to have access to such

an opportunity

although a lot of people know that the

american criminal legal system

cages far more people than anywhere else

in the world

or at any other point in human history

most people don’t know that

severely limited access to higher

education for people in prison

reinforces mass incarceration according

to the department of justice

at least 95 of people in state prisons

will be released at some point and more

than 80 percent

get out with time left to serve on

parole

but most people go back to prison within

the first three years after release

i completed 18 months of parole and

recently celebrated four years of

release without being re-arrested for

anything

i’m a taxpayer citizen who’s lived

experiences

empowered me to offer informed

perspectives on the issue of why so many

people go back to prison

and to be clear perspectives informed by

lived experience

are the most credible source of research

data on this topic

that said it is important for me to

explain

that the language i use and encourage

others to use and refer to people who

have been to prison

is an effort intended to humanize us so

the reason why i say formally caged

instead of formally incarcerated is

because i want to visually and

graphically contextualize

for those who are fortunate not to have

this experience the act of putting

people in cages

as the default response to society’s

social problems

so i never use words like inmate

offender

prisoner or convict because i know that

those labels have harmful consequences

that punish people long after their time

has been served

there are 2.3 million people in america

who are

held in more than 7 000 prisons jails or

so-called

correctional facilities in stark

contrast

there are only 300 higher education and

prison programs

a higher education and prison program is

defined as one that provides

post-secondary education

is formally affiliated with a college or

university

and stipulates a high school diploma or

ged as a requirement for admission

now of the 300 programs in existence

there are approximately

25 081 students enrolled

although student enrollment has likely

declined considerably

since the publication of these finders

in 2020

as the number of people who are dying in

prison from covet increases daily

what this data tells us though is that

only about one percent of the 2.3

million people who are caged in america

have access to higher education these

statistics are even more severe in

missouri

where 859 out of every 100 000 people

are locked up

this rate of incarceration is well above

the national average of 698

out of every 100 000 people in missouri

where there are more than 52 000 people

in custody or unsupervised release

there are only 55 students enrolled in

two programs

which means that the percentage of

access here is roughly 0.1 percent

given this percentage i bet that it

doesn’t come as a surprise that without

my participation in pep

i wouldn’t be here today because instead

of access

to high quality higher education or

platforms like this

people returning to society typically

become entangled in a web of legal

and institutional barriers that we are

ill-prepared to navigate

in missouri alone there are 684

collateral consequences laws that

restrict people with criminal

convictions

from participating fully in society and

cast us

often permanently to just exist in the

margins

the right to vote access to education

employment and housing

are just a few of the challenges that

people face after release from prison

according to the prison policy

initiative formerly caged people are

five times more likely to be without

work than the general public

ten times more likely to experience

homelessness and five times more likely

to be without a high school diploma

these factors help to explain

increasingly high rates of recidivism

which is people going back to prison

after being released

and contrary to popular belief cajun

people doesn’t deter

crime or improve public safety in fact

the punishment system in our country is

clearly ineffective at improving public

safety

and we must try something different i

believe strongly that restorative

alternatives to the current model of

caging as many people as possible

are critical to building a more just and

equitable society

a recent study by the rand corporation

found that

obtaining a higher education reduced

recidivism by 43

and it’s four to five times less costly

than reincarcerating people

as such an expansion of higher education

and prison programs

specifically ones that prioritize

re-entry pathways

that lead students to the traditional

campuses that sponsor them

will alleviate taxpayers to some of the

cost burdens of just

shipping people back to prison

additionally

it will provide folks who are in prison

with the necessary tools and networks of

support

to make positive contributions to

society when they get out

because the hard reality is that time

served is

insufficient compensation for the deaths

we are told we must pay back to society

years of unproductive time in isolation

in a diet that includes food that is

literally labeled not fit for human

consumption

are all largely unimportant after

release which is when the process of

rehabilitation really begins

it is not possible for people who have

been to prison to make amends

to anyone in society impacted by their

offense until they are released

and the idea that prison actually

rehabilitates anyone

is frankly ridiculous from my vantage

point

cajun people is intended to break the

human spirit

chiefly by ignoring the root causes of

what leads people to prison to begin

with

and by cutting off all community and

familial connections

none of this positions people who have

caused harm to make amends

or those who have been harmed to be

healed

with this in mind although the

acceptance of formerly caged people into

campus communities has the capacity

to elevate and to transform lives it

must be reinforced with community

buy-in collective efforts to establish

new social standards that are centered

in principles of restorative justice

and harm reduction can bring about real

and lasting social change

but as the events of the past year in

the global fight for racial and social

justice

has made crystal clear efforts to affect

real change will be met with violent

resistance

even so we must remain steadfast in all

movements to do away with systems that

foster harm

rather than healing and that compound

the challenges that people face after

being released from prison

now to this point i have only talked

about

some of the barriers that returning

citizens face after release

and have yet to disclose any of the

personal challenges

that i confronted in my own reentry

the reason that i took this approach is

that my goal has been to convince you

that

greater access to higher education for

all is vastly more important than one

formerly caged person

or the one percent of the entire prison

population currently being granted

access

so now that you know my message is much

broader than how i’ve been personally

impacted

i want to explain what i mean when i say

that access to high quality higher

education

saved my life

nine months before i was released from

prison on march 23 2017

my younger brother was arrested and

charged with accessory to murder

we have an older brother who was already

doing a life sentence

so when my younger brother got sentenced

to life without in prison

plus 100 years

our family was even more devastated than

when i got locked up

my mother has suffered two debilitating

strokes since i’ve been home and now has

to live in a nursing facility

additionally i have struggled to repair

more fractured relationships than i can

count

suffice it to say that my social and

emotional development

took a major hit over the course of

nearly 13 years in a concrete box

but since my release i’ve become a

father to two children

who have given my life greater purpose

in retrospect i endured each of the

personal challenges

that i confronted simply because i

recognized the value of the opportunity

that i had

see i knew that my acceptance into this

campus community

was an opportunity that a lot of people

might have thought that i shouldn’t have

and i needed to prove to myself into any

naysayers

that i was worthy of it plus i knew that

if i dropped the ball

others might not get the same

opportunity that i did and this was a

huge motivator

in the journey to graduation because for

me it was legitimately a second chance

as i was enrolled in college when i got

locked up

but most people in prison have never

received a first chance to access higher

education

however i understand that no matter how

convincingly i

present my argument there will still be

some people who cannot be convinced that

mass incarceration

is a humanitarian crisis in the same way

that i do

and there’s no way that i can produce a

valid argument to deny that i am biased

on the issue

but i genuinely appreciate conversations

with naysayers the most because

they give me opportunities to correct

distorted and mostly fear-based

perspectives

see i found that even if people are woke

to the social economic and political

impacts of mass incarceration

many still just aren’t open to equitable

access to higher education

for people in prison as a solution to it

but because my undergraduate education

has armed me with dozens of resources to

reference and waking people up

the conversations that i have with

naysayers are fluid and easy

see i direct them to resources like the

2018 equity indicators report

which was published by the saint louis

city mayor’s office

and says that of the 10 000 vacant

properties

in the city more than 90 percent on the

north side where i grew up

i explained how the crumbling housing

stock is the result of the city’s long

and prominent local history

of racial discrimination in housing

policy in practice

oh i’m i’m quick to name drop a study by

the washington medical school

which highlights several north st louis

zip codes that have some of the highest

rates of childhood asthma

in the country i explained how

communities where poverty and

disadvantage are so deliberately

concentrated like this

inevitably lead people to prison

lately i’ve been especially delighted to

tell folks that

the restriction of pell grants for

people in prison has been lifted

which means that like it or not more

people like me will soon be

granted access to higher education

to folks who seem to bristle at this

news i tried to explain that

more often than not the reasons why kids

who are growing up in the neighborhoods

like the ones that i did

are more likely to end up in prison or

dead

than we are to access higher education

have very little to do with our academic

abilities

look there is no doubt in my mind that

being a part of this campus community

shielded me from many of the barriers

that returning citizens

are held up by and because i am keenly

aware

of the social benefits afforded to me by

my membership

for the past several years on any given

day i can be spotted rocking a washu

t-shirt

i can legit wear a different washu

t-shirt for a week straight

but i have to admit that only a fraction

of this is about school pride

see for me a washu t-shirt is like body

armor

but don’t get it twisted i’m under no

illusions that my t-shirts have the

power to shield me

from the social impacts of being black

and formally caged

i know that they don’t because i grew up

right here in saint louis

where the local police department killed

more people than any other department in

the country between 2013

and 2020 in a recent study reported that

being black in missouri means that i am

at least 15 times more likely

to be gunned down by a cop than a white

person

still i’m convinced that when people see

my black skin in those t-shirts

they convince themselves that i’m not as

much of a threat as their implicit

biases tell them

that i am since september of last year

my educational privilege and the

connections that it has afforded

allowed me to work to end the injustice

of money bail in nashville tennessee

where i’m employed

as a coordinator for the nashville

community bail fund a nonprofit

organization

that works to free people who are

detained pre-trial without convictions

simply because they do not have money to

pay for bail

additionally i am privileged to work

closely with an organization called

choosing

justice initiative that works to

standardize

high quality legal representation for

poor people

and strives to end wealth-based

disparities in the criminal legal system

i am also studying to take the law

school admissions test and plan to apply

for enrollment into law school

in the fall of 2022. considering the

mountain of challenges that formerly

caged people

and counter upon release from prison

determination and commitment alone

would not have been sufficient to reach

this point

i am a formerly caged person i

am a washroom graduate i am an agent

for transformative change i am jameel

spann

thank you for listening