The White House plan announced last week to award federal education funding to prison inmates spotlighted a population that is often an afterthought in the national discussion on college access.
More than 1.5 million people are behind bars in state and federal prisons, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and when those on parole or probation are included, the number under some sort of correctional supervision swells to nearly 7 million.
More than 700,000 inmates are released each year, a significant but marginalized population frequently unprepared for life on the outside, with few skills and often without a high school diploma. College-level instruction on the inside is mostly a patchwork of correspondence courses and privately-funded in-house programs staffed by volunteers.
In many states, including California, investment in rehabilitation and education services has for the most part fallen by the wayside.
[For more of this story, written by Carla Rivera, go to http://www.latimes.com/local/e...05-story.html#page=1]
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