Chaminade University of Honolulu will receive a three-year $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to expand its Higher Education in Prison (HEP) program, which offers degrees in the humanities and liberal arts to those who are incarcerated, enabling them to leave prison with new identities, perspectives and goals to help them thrive in society.
“At Chaminade, one of our primary Marianist values is to advocate for social justice for transformative change,” said Chaminade president Lynn Babington. “We support a rehabilitation-through-education narrative, which we know is essential to incarcerated individuals finding a pathway to a second chance and a better future.”
The university’s current HEP program serves only males at the Halawa Correctional Facility. Chaminade plans to extend its HEP program to the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua, and to the Hawaii men serving time at the Saguaro Prison in Arizona.
The goal is to expand degree offerings, starting with the men in Halawa, to include an associate in arts degree that can be extended to a bachelor of arts in interdisciplinary studies.
The coursework for the programs will emphasize a humanities and liberal arts curriculum, and will be offered in a culturally responsive way that will resonate with the overly-represented indigenous prison population. Citing racial equity as a primary condition that makes HEP programs urgently necessary, the grant underscores the over-representation of Native Hawaiians in the criminal justice system.
According to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Hawaii’s incarceration rate increased 403% from 1978 to 2016, with Native Hawaiians affected disproportionately. Though only 18% of the state’s adult population, Native Hawaiians represent 37% of those incarcerated. Hawaiian women make up 44% of the incarcerated women in Hawaii.
Women inmates already have access to some college courses, but they don’t have degree options. This Mellon grant will change this.
Providing education in prison has proven to reduce recidivism rates, and is associated with higher employment rates, which will improve public safety and allow individuals to return home to their communities and contribute to society. A 2018 study from the RAND Corporation found that incarcerated individuals who participated in correctional education were 48 percent less likely to return to prison within three years than inmates who did not participate in education programs.
RAND estimated that for every dollar invested in correctional education programs, four to five dollars are saved on three-year, re-incarceration costs.
