At Stateville maximum security prison, first group of prisoners earns college degrees from Northwestern: ‘A place of second chances’
Before Sheila Bedi starts her law school class, the Northwestern University professor’s nearly 20 students make last-minute touch-ups to their final presentations. Some look over their notes, while others chat with their neighbors.
The first group goes to the front of the room, painted purple and white with graduation photos on the walls. They discuss mass incarceration, from its ties to slavery to the prison abolition movement. Questions are asked, feedback is given and another group takes their place.
While it might sound like a normal college class, Bedi isn’t teaching at the Evanston, Illinois, campus, and prisons aren’t something her students have only read about in a textbook.
More than 450 prisoners are housed inside Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, about an hour drive from Chicago, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. Inside the men’s maximum security prison, in a couple of rooms filled with desks and chalkboards, is the country’s only bachelor’s degree-granting program for incarcerated students offered by a Top 10 university.
Last month, 16 men became the first group to from Northwestern’s Prison Education Program, an accomplishment they and their professors hope will lead to a second chance. Experts believe similar
