I have been in prison for 33 years now, and for 28 of those years I tried, unsuccessfully, to get an education. When I was on death row, I was told by corrections officers that getting an education would be a waste of time. After I got off death row, I tried, once again, to take some college or vocational classes since I already had my GED. Once again, I was told that “guys like me”—those of us with long-term prison sentences—weren’t worth being taught. Imagine being told repeatedly that you don’t deserve to learn.

You get an education one way or another in prison; it just comes down to whether you can access a formal one. Many of us are left to learn and rehabilitate ourselves (or not). Even as I’ve focused on growing and rehabilitating, early on in my time, I learned things I didn’t want to know, like how to bust a safe, rock up dope, and make LSD.

After decades, I was one of 20 applicants selected for the first cohort of Northwestern’s Prison Education Program, founded at the now-closed Stateville Correctional Center in 2018. We earned our associate’s degrees in conjunction with Oakton Community College in early 2022. And in November 2023, we made history as the first class to earn our bachelor’s degrees in social sciences from Northwestern University. Most of us graduated with honors. While great, this program is very small and privately funded, hosting only 20 men per cohort at Sheridan Correctional Center, where I am now, and another cohort at Logan Correctional Center, one of the state’s women’s prisons. That’s out of almost 30,000 people within the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC).

People may assume that prisons are designed to rehabilitate people. I can tell you from decades of experience, however, that people are put in prison and not given adequate mental health treatment, education, training, or many options to earn money beyond a few cents each day. And when their time is done, most are shoved out the door, back to where they came from, without much in the way of job prospects. 

I think it’s time to broadly change incarceration from this warehouse model to one of rehabilitation and education. An education, especially a degree-bearing education, can bring financial mobility: You can be hired for better jobs that pay a real wage and have a potential for growth. Without an education, you have to scratch and claw.

Since 1987, IDOC has required anyone who will be in prison for more than two years, except those with life sentences, to take the Test of Adult Basic Education. Those who test below the sixth-grade level are required to attend at least three months of Adult Basic Education instruction. When people test above that level, they may be able to access higher level basic education courses, courses to earn a GED, and vocational courses offered by IDOC’s Office of Adult Education and Vocational Services. But a lot of people come to prison without an education—I have helped numerous guys over the years who couldn’t read or write—so there is a long backlog for these programs. Some guys remain on the waitlists for years, and others are released before they ever get a chance to get their GED. At Sheridan Correctional alone, 216 people are on the Adult Basic Education waitlist as of March 2026. 

Access to postsecondary education courses has changed a lot over the decades I’ve been here. In the early 1990s, college and vocational programs were widely neglected. The 1994 Crime Bill banned all people in federal and state prisons from getting need-based federal financial aid, like the Pell Grant, leaving a lot of people cut off from higher education. In 2023, after almost three decades, Pell Grants were finally restored for people in prison, gradually increasing participation in postsecondary education programs.

Now, in Illinois prisons, people can access degree-bearing educational programs through partnerships between IDOC and outside community colleges and universities. Currently, almost a dozen host college programs in prisons across the state. According to a 2025 Open Campus analysis, only about 2,000 people in Illinois prisons are participating in these programs. That’s roughly one in every 15 people incarcerated here. Not to mention that, according to the same study, over two thousand people across the state are on waitlists for these programs, sometimes for years. [IDOC notes that these “waitlists change daily depending on each program’s academic calendar and capacity.”]

A 2013 study by California-based research organization RAND found that prisoners who participated in a corrections education program were 43 percent less likely to recidivate than those who didn’t get an education. Prisoners who participated in vocational programs were 28 percent more likely to obtain employment than those without vocational training, according to the same RAND study.

There is an especially enormous benefit for those who participate in college-level programs. Recidivism rates drop to roughly 5 percent for those who earn a bachelor’s degree. These programs expand and improve participants’ employment opportunities, allowing for smoother, more successful reentry. 

More robust educational programs don’t just improve people in prisons lives, they also make the communities people return to better and safer. Despite truth-in-sentencing laws and death-by-incarceration sentences, the vast majority of people who go to prison will get out. In fact, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, over 90 percent of the people who go to prison will go back to the same neighborhoods they came from. In Illinois specifically, about half of the people released from prisons across the state return to Chicago, according to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.

Given its benefits, every person, regardless of their sentence, should be able to access postsecondary education with transferable credits if their release comes before their degree. It’s also time for more mental health therapy and classes, and for widespread vocational training in trades like welding, plumbing, electrical work, and for obtaining a Commercial Driver’s License. If prisons were really interested in rehabilitation, they would make sure all people in prison could participate in these programs, regardless of their sentences. 

For those who say that prisoners shouldn’t get anything, understand that being in prison itself is the punishment. Not being able to go where you want, do what you want, eat what you want, not being able to be there for your family and your children when they need you, that is the punishment. 

Education is not just important; it’s a basic human right. I can tell you personally that getting an education was life-changing. The Northwestern Prison Education Program opened so many doors for me and other graduates, including one who is now out and attending law school at Northwestern and another who was accepted into two law schools so far for the fall.

Education is a powerful tool that can save lives. It can contextualize your past, alter and broaden your outlook on the present, and change your future. Everyone should get that opportunity.

Anthony Ehlers is an activist, journalist, and artist. He graduated from Northwestern University in 2023 and is currently a teaching fellow.

Inside Voices is a series of first-person essays and reported pieces by writers impacted by the Illinois carceral system.

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