Before she was a professor at the University of Illinois, Rebecca Ginsburg helped educate San Quentin prisoners. Now, she is building on those experiences to bring college classes to prisoners in Danville, Ill.
The Education Justice Program (EJP) offers classes in the Danville Correctional Center including how to teach English as a second language, science, cultural writing workshops, history, statistics, linguistics and engineering. Inmates can earn college credits but cannot as of yet get degrees.
Ginsburg, a professor of education policy organization and landscape architecture at the University of Illinois, co-founded EJP and serves as its director.“The state of Illinois had a long history of being in the forefront of offering higher education in prisons,” Ginsburg said. “Today the only place (in Illinois) where inmates can receive upper-level classes is at the Danville facility.”
While she was a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, Ginsburg came to San Quentin to teach in an inmate education program similar to EJP.
“At one time, programs like EJP were widespread, but in 1994 the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act eliminated Pell Grants for prisoners,” Ginsburg said. “Today, only a handful of programs like EJP remain.”
With approximately 50 to 60 faculty, volunteers, student and staff, EJP is driven by its concerns about the cost of imprisonment and the financial and emotional effects on prisoners’ families and community. Funding for the program comes from grants and donations.
Ginsburg said EJP believes in prison education as the tool to address those concerns.
“It allows you to stimulate your mind and reminds you of the good nature of society,” said Emile Santiago, 40, a student in EJP. Santiago’s EJP class schedule includes film noir, theater, other education classes and Shakespeare. “We have a tremendous respect and admiration for the instructors. It reminds you that people are good.”
For inmates to enroll, they must have a high school diploma or its equivalent. “It’s not often that a major university knocks on our door and offers us the opportunity to have free programs and upper-level education opportunities,” said Debbie Denning, chief of program and support services for the Danville prison. “It’s a win-win for everyone.”
Ginsburg says EJP’s year-round offering of classes, discussions, workshops and other opportunities has earned great admiration from inmates and administrators in the Illinois Department of Corrections.
“Instructors talk about the project as changing their orientation to the world, the way they teach, the way they learn their ideas about who they are and what they can accomplish,” Ginsburg said.
