A semester at San Quentin State Prison

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/10/2019 (2250 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

San Quentin State Prison in Marin County overlooks the scenic San Francisco Bay in Northern California and offers a stunning view from its parking lot.

This is where I am teaching an English 101 reading and composition class this semester, as part of my research study leave from University of Winnipeg.

As California’s oldest prison, San Quentin opened in 1854 and has been in operation since then, now under the auspices of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Today, it is an all-male mainline prison with a population of 4,300.

The program I am with, the Prison University Project (PUP), provides higher education to incarcerated people at San Quentin State Prison. It also raises public awareness about higher education access and criminal justice. PUP started offering college classes at San Quentin in 1996, after the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act disallowed incarcerated people in the United States from receiving Pell grants. Hundreds of university programs in prisons across the country were discontinued due to lack of funding.

Stepping in to address the gap, PUP offered two classes at San Quentin in its inaugural year and has been offering college preparatory classes in math and English, and classes towards an associate of arts degree (a two-year degree) ever since. PUP was incorporated as an independent non-profit organization in 2006.

Today, PUP offers 20 courses per semester with options  such as introduction to literature, anthropology, U.S. history, psychology, Spanish, and intermediate algebra. Tuition and fees for the 325 active students are covered by donations from textbook publishers and PUP. All courses are taught by qualified volunteers.

Currently PUP has 10 paid staff and about 100 volunteers, which includes volunteer faculty, tutors, and substitute tutors, who keep the program going three semesters per year.

In 2015, PUP was awarded the National Humanities Medal by then-U.S. President Barack Obama.
I am here to learn from a program that has been actively involved in higher education in prison for almost a quarter of a century.

Helen Lepp Friesen is a community correspondent for Fort Garry. You can contact her at helenfriesen@hotmail.com