A recent Seattle Times article highlighted the Freedom Education Project of Puget Sound (FEPPS), a program which offers inmates in Washington the opportunity of a college education: “Education does more than offer inmates a credential, “… it teaches them how to be the people we want our fellow citizens to be — thoughtful, critically aware of the world around them, disciplined and able to recognize authority.”
This, plus the 2013 RAND Corp. study which concluded that “… every dollar spent on inmate education translated to $4 to $5 saved on re-incarceration” (along with many other reasons) are why PLAP is now holding a prison book drive! All donated books will be disseminated to prisons nationwide by the Prison Book Program, an organization run out of Quincy, MA that is dedicated to furthering the education of America’s incarcerated population. Donations can be brought into PLAP’s office until the book drive ends on 2/4/15, though books can always be mailed to Prison Book Program directly.
For the full Seattle Times article, click here.
“Effective immediately, the new rules will reduce the maximum amount of time inmates age 18 and older can be sentenced to solitary confinement to 30 days, from 90. The department also will eliminate so-called owed time. In the past, inmates who left Rikers before completing their stint in solitary confinement returned there if they went back to the jail.”