Prison to College Pipeline Program

Prison to College Pipeline Program

“Replacing the school-to-prison pipeline with a pipeline from prison to college”

Program Description and Mission:Critically aware of the prison-industrial complex and school-to-prison pipeline which funnels masses of young Blacks & Latinos into prison, student leaders of various races and cultural backgrounds at the University of Maryland-College Park are involved in a new pipeline linking imprisoned youth with college resources and support.

The Prison-to-College Pipeline engages Black and Latino students, faculty, and staff at University of Maryland-College Park (UMCP) in supporting the education, empowerment and leadership of incarcerated youth, and working alongside youth in detention to change the unjust policies and practices impacting their lives. This program is a partnership between
the Justice for D.C. Youth Coalition- a community-based juvenile justice organization,
the Carceral Studies Working Group- an on-campus collaborative addressing mass incarceration,
the Nyumburu Cultural Center’s Leadership Series and the Black Male Initiative- organizations that unite students, faculty, and staff in learning about and taking action on socio-political issues facing communities of color.

For more information about this program please email: shani@jdcy.org

Program volunteers plan, coordinate and implement events and activities focused on leadership development, educational achievement, political awareness, and youth organizing in close collaboration with incarcerated youth. Most program activities will take place on the grounds of Oak Hill Youth Center, D.C’s main juvenile detention center located in Laurel, Md. Participants will work as part of one of the following leadership teams: tutoring or events planning/ workshop facilitation and organizing. If you are interested in starting your own Prison to College Pipeline Program let us know how we might be able to help you get up and running. All you need is a group of organized, dedicated, and consistent community members who are interested in destroying the Prison Industrial Complex as we know it. We are in the midst of a crisis which adversely affects Black and Latino Communities in a vastly disproportionate manner as contrasted to the US white population.

Some of the data below highlights this:

NATIONAL PICTURE:

SUBSTANTIAL RACIAL DISPARITY
The American prison and jail system is defined by an entrenched racial
disparity in the population of incarcerated people. The national
incarceration rate for whites is 412 per 100,000 residents, compared to 2,290
for African Americans, and 742 for Hispanics. There are 2.2 million people (Black People, alone, amount for more than 900,00) behind bars in the US. This is a more than 500% rise since the 1970s.

Racial and Ethnic acial Rates of Incarceration
RACIAL/ETHNIC GROUP RATE PER 100,000
White 412
Black 2,290
Hispanic 742

Source: The Sentencing Project

U.S. incarceration rates by race, June 30, 2006:
Whites: 409 per 100,000
Latinos: 1,038 per 100,000
Blacks: 2,468 per 100,000

Gender is an important "filter" on who goes to prison or jail, June 30, 2006:
Females: 134 per 100,000
Males: 1,384 per 100,000

Look at just the males by race, and the incarceration rates become even more frightening, June 30, 2006:
White males: 736 per 100,000
Latino males: 1,862 per 100,000
Black males: 4,789 per 100,000

If you look at males aged 25-29 and by race, you can see what is going on even clearer, June 30, 2006:
For White males ages 25-29: 1,685 per 100,000.
For Latino males ages 25-29: 3,912 per 100,000.
For Black males ages 25-29: 11,695 per 100,000. (That's 11.7% of Black men in their late 20s.)

Source: Prisonsucks.com