#LIBERAL CRIME SQUAD LEARNIBG SERIES#
Today, BPI enrolls over 300 incarcerated students full-time in programs that culminate in degrees from Bard College it offers extensive support for its alumni in and around New York City and, it has developed the BPI Summer Residency, an intensive, experiential, and hands-on series of workshops on the nuts and bolts of college-in-prison for new and emerging practitioners led by BPI staff and alumni. These programs transform the negative impacts of criminal punishment and create radical inroads of access and opportunity to higher learning. Since 2001, BPI has created groundbreaking opportunities for college within America’s prison systems. The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) works to redefine the availability, affordability, and expectations typically associated with higher education in America. Learn how BPI developed a temporary distance model, built and maintained a virtual community, and tapped into our longtime work in public health to support students and alumni through trying times. Over 70 alumni worked with BPI’s Continuing Education Specialist on plans to return to school. Five cohorts of alumni engaged in the new Transitional Workshop.
The BPI Debate Union held an intramural debate over Webex for an audience of public health professionals with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 63 students completed degrees in prison including six students who completed Senior Projects after coming home. BPI doubled the size of the student body at the BA level. Reentry workshops and some coursework will take place in-person in prison this summer as the college prepares for a fully in-person fall semester.ĭespite COVID and despite being physically apart, BPI students, alumni, faculty, and staff accomplished much over the past year and a half. On June 1, 2021, we resumed in-person activities in prison for the first time since March 2020.