Next up for prison reform: how best to use education as a path forward

To the organ sounds of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” Robert Pratt sits upright in his royal-blue front-row chair. Behind the row of eight black-gowned men sit family members and other invitees; ahead, a line of be-suited officials flank a small dais.

For Mr. Pratt, this is his second graduation ceremony, his second try at balancing a mortarboard hat on his closely cropped head. A week earlier he had joined 500 other graduates from Asnuntuck Community College – the class of 2018 – inside a columnated concert hall. But this time feels different, more real. The guys on his row? They’re his classmates, his peers.

And the room where they sit in rows, waiting for their diplomas, is their prison chow hall.

Pratt is among nearly 5,000 incarcerated people who enrolled in college classes last fall as part of the Second Chance Pell program begun under President Barack Obama. It was the second year of an experimental program that funnels Pell Grants to

Legislative momentum stalledCivilian 'whiplash'The road to a diploma