“I will bring change to this country”: College-in-prison and political empowerment

Incarceration is politically disempowering, teaching lessons of civic exclusion and voicelessness. Although this is well-documented, incarcerated people's sense of their political citizenship is not monolithic. In this article, we examine the political empowerment of a potentially unique group of incarcerated people: college-in-prison students. To do so, we use an original longitudinal survey of incarcerated individuals admitted and not admitted to a college-in-prison program in the United States. In the first wave, we surveyed 56 finalists for the program, about half of whom were admitted soon after. A year into the program, we followed up with the same participants. We find that admitted participants sustained high political empowerment, while non-admitted participants reported modest declines. Qualitative responses show that college-in-prison recuperates participants’ sense of citizenship and exposes them to viewpoint diversity. Altogether, using a novel research design, our findings suggest that access to higher education can bolster empowerment for this highly marginalized population.