Prison Education Project at UCI

Help support the Prison Education Project! As an organization, we aim to help people in prison by providing various educational courses to help set them up for success post-imprisonment. We have taught GED courses, College Readiness, and have planned Career Development and Forgiveness & Healing courses. Help fund these as we move into a remote learning environment with our students and aim to educate our communities on injustices people in prison face. Our financial resources will go in aiding the furthering of the organization and our mission. We also intend on sharing our donations with other organizations in need of financial assistance.

The Prison Education Project expands educational opportunities for inmates in 14  California correctional facilities. With the assistance of 2,400 university student and faculty volunteers, PEP has serviced approximately 7,000 inmates in these facilities since 2011. PEP is the largest volunteer-based prison education program of its kind in the United States. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and PEP have embraced a progressive and innovative approach to supplementing and expanding educational opportunities for inmates. By providing academic, life skills, and career development programming, PEP aims to educate, empower, and transform the lives of incarcerated individuals. The goal of PEP is to create a "Prison-to-School Pipeline" and provide in-custody students with the cognitive tools necessary to function as productive citizens. Our multi-layered approach enhances human development, reduces recidivism, saves resources, and allows participants to ultimately contribute to the economic and civic life of California. The overarching philosophy of PEP is to use the resources in the backyard of each of the state’s prisons to make change e.g. university student and faculty volunteers. There is a college within a 30-mile radius of the majority of the state's 34 prisons. PEP's goal is to collaborate with these colleges to assist the CDCR in its mission of rehabilitation. For every percentage point that we reduce recidivism, we save the state approximately $89.4 million. The annual cost of housing an inmate in California is $75,560, which is now more than the cost of tuition at Harvard. A study funded by the U.S. Justice Department found that prison education reduced recidivism by 43%.

Specifically for PEP at UCI we aim to educate the population of UCI and hopefully the people connected to this population. As a blossoming organization, we have been developing ways for the Prison Education Project to be inclusive of everyone whether people who have no knowledge of the prison system, are very knowledgeable, or they experienced the prison system themselves. As a social justice-oriented program our goal is to educate and aid where we can and when our help is wanted. We have been developing ways to improve and expand PEP at UCI beyond the facility visits. During this time of the pandemic, we aim to focus on our education portion by educating our community about the injustices of people in prison. With physical visits on hiatus, we hope to create donations bags for those in facilities and to create CDs for our students to continue providing lessons for them remotely.