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- The University of Utah received $8 million to establish the Prison Education Action Research Lab (PEARL).
- PEARL will advance educational justice for incarcerated communities through research and leadership.
- The initiative aims to improve educational opportunities and influence policies for incarcerated students.
SALT LAKE CITY — A team of researchers at the University of Utah was awarded $8 million to launch the nation's first center dedicated solely to prison education research and leadership.
"It's huge. I'm not sure it's completely sunk in yet," said Erin Castro, co-founder of the Utah Prison Education Project and associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the U.
Castro and her team will use the $8 million awarded by the Ascendium Education Group to establish the Prison Education Action Research Lab (PEARL) to advance educational justice for people and communities impacted by incarceration.
A release from the U. said the lab will serve as a "vital resource" in a growing field in need of the next generation of researchers, leaders and practitioners focused on prison education.
Castro has been focused on prison higher education and the pathways incarcerated people take to postsecondary education after incarceration for the past decade-plus.
She cofounded the Utah Prison Education Project — a program aimed at advancing educational equity through on-site higher education, research and advocacy — and in 2023, Castro was awarded a $750,000 grant from the Ascendium Education Group to support planning for what is now the PEARL.
Castro said the current understanding of postsecondary education in prisons largely comes from the field of criminology. The fact that this lab will be housed in the U.'s College of Education represents a "distinct disciplinary and pedagogical approach to the work" that situates incarcerated people as college students.
"We have such a proliferation of our community with criminal convictions, and for most, accessing college or postsecondary education broadly is not only difficult, but it is near impossible. I think what we're positioned to do well, certainly at the University of Utah, is to provide a model of, you know, we've got a flagship research-intensive state institution enrolling incarcerated people inside the prison and starting to build that pathway to campus," Castro said.
PEARL aims to further postsecondary education in prisons through three strategic focal points:
- Develop and deliver a professional online credential for prison education program leaders and practitioners, led by Paméla Cappas-Toro, PEARL's director of teaching and learning.
- Provide a model of high-quality programming through the Utah Prison Education Project and the STEM Community Alliance Program, directed by Andy Eisen, PEARL's director of prison education.
- PEARL's anchor project, called the Prison Education Research Initiative, is a first-of-its-kind multi-institutional study that will address urgent policy- and practice-relevant research questions.
The Prison Education Research Initiative, which will be led by Castro and Jason Taylor, associate professor of educational leadership and policy, will collect systematic and longitudinal data on a diverse range of prison education programs, their students and their outcomes in partnership with at least 22 other higher education institutions.
We know that access to postsecondary education during incarceration increases the likelihood that when someone is released, they're able to access jobs with living wages, jobs with some dignity, and they're able to support their families and to pay their debts and whatever they need to do.
– Erin Castro
Specifically, Castro said the hope is to work with the institutions to learn more about the academic indicators of incarcerated students — think enrollment, GPA, completion rate — and how they experience higher education.
"These are questions that we can readily answer for non-incarcerated students across various identities, and unfortunately, we can't yet do that for incarcerated college students," Castro said. "This benchmarking, kind of baseline project, is an attempt to try to answer some of those questions."
She hopes this foundational research will ultimately improve the educational opportunities made available to incarcerated people.
Providing learning opportunities to incarcerated populations, Castro said, carries societal impacts that extend far beyond the walls of a prison and even generationally through family.
"We know that increased postsecondary educational attainment improves community safety. We know that providing postsecondary education to incarcerated adults increases the postsecondary aspirations of children of incarcerated students," Castro said. "We know that access to postsecondary education during incarceration increases the likelihood that when someone is released, they're able to access jobs with living wages, jobs with some dignity, and they're able to support their families and to pay their debts and whatever they need to do."
As the lab grows, Castro thinks the information it puts out will be helpful to policymakers to enhance state and federal policies supporting incarcerated students.
"There's been some movement of the legislature in this space. There's been some movement with USHE (Utah System of Higher Education) in this space, and I think this presents some really lovely opportunities to collaborate across the state and to elevate the work of college and prison here in Utah," Castro said.
