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Journal of Human Services Fall/2016

81

Review of College for Convicts:

The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons

Shoshana D. Kerewsky, Deanna Chappell Belcher

Book Review

With College for Convicts: The Case for Higher Education in American Prisons,

Christopher Zoukis (2014) enters the ongoing national debate on rehabilitation versus

punishment for people convicted of crimes. Specifically, he argues that prison education

programs benefit both convicts and society. His particular areas of focus, as well as the questions

left unexplored, provide a basis for useful critical discussion with students, educators, and

administrators.

One of the book’s chief assets is its accessibility. Human services students who are not

following the ongoing and intensifying national debate about prison reform (for example, who do

not know that prisoners once had access to Pell Grants, then did not, and now might again) will

find Zoukis’s (2014) overview helpful. The book includes an historical overview of prison

education, a discussion of barriers to education faced by both individual convicts and prison

systems, examples of successful programs and partnerships, and resources. His practical

suggestions include approaches used in other countries as well as appendices providing concrete

information, such as sources for prisoners to obtain free and inexpensive books. Zoukis

incorporates references to a great many studies on issues such as the relationship between lack of

education and recidivism, the cost of education versus reincarceration, and the impacts of

educational attainment on both prison functioning and community crime rates. This material will

be extremely helpful for human services students wrestling with these ideas for the first time.

Since human services students and professionals may work with prisoners and people with

previous convictions, both in detention or transition settings and in the general client population,

their increased awareness of these issues will provide an important context for their clients’

experiences and needs. The book should also prove useful for educators and administrators

considering partnerships with prison education programs and developing relevant field study

placements for students.

Zoukis (2014) is currently incarcerated; his book is likely to move and inspire college

students to consider their relative privilege and to challenge their assumptions about people who

are incarcerated. In this regard, the book also serves as a personal, humanizing document, both

through Zoukis’s account of his own story and those of other incarcerated people (including

older people and those serving life sentences). These sections bring the statistics and Zoukis’s

arguments for prisoner education alive.

Zoukis (2014) sometimes loses this personal connection in paragraphs and sections of

dense statistical reportage. Instructors may need to help students find a good balance between

important questions, such as how a community benefits economically when it educates former

offenders, and students’ recognition of shared humanity with the people being discussed.

Students with past convictions may seek entry to human services programs in order to

contribute to the community or help those similar to themselves; Paulson, Groves, and Hagedorn

(in press) note that community college human services programs may not be permitted to

exclude people with criminal backgrounds from enrollment due to open enrollment admissions

Shoshana D. Kerewsky and Deanna Chappell Belcher, Family & Human Services Program, University of Oregon,

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