Course Objective
- Describe what is needed to develop a public health concentration for any new program that focuses on the education and training of inmates
- Describe how current ‘pipeline’ programs to increase the participation of underrepresented minority students can be adjusted to create a pipeline for students in prison
- Describe how evaluation studies can assist in the creation of programs designed to alter the school-to-prison pipeline
Date: January 27, 2016
Reviewed June 30, 2020
Presenter:
Robert Fullilove, EdD
Professor of Sociomedical Sciences
Associate Dean, Community and Minority Affairs
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
Mass incarceration is one of the leading contributors of health disparities, with a disproportionately large percentage of African American and Latino men experiencing incarceration during their lifetime. Having ever served time makes finding a job, securing housing, and utilizing health care services significantly more difficult, if not impossible. While the United States prison system is meant to “rehabilitate” inmates, many who are released have no education, no job, and no home, and are forced to resort to criminal activities, leading to high recidivism rates. This webinar raises the importance of educational programs for inmates as an effective tool for improving outcomes after release and reducing recidivism. Dr. Fullilove discusses his experience with the Bard Prison Initiative and his vision for a public health prison education system that would educate and recruit inmates as community public health workers striving to improve health and reduce disparities within their own neighborhoods after their release.
