Morris College President Said Sewell and Benedict College President Roslyn Clark Artis speak on Benedict's campus in Columbia on Monday, Feb. 12, 2025. COLUMBIA — A group of South Carolina colleges are set to expand their efforts around prison education thanks to $1.3 million in new grant funding aimed at supporting students once they're released. The grant money will allow Healthy Routines, a Columbia-based nonprofit, to offer more technical assistance and hire four new academic reentry coordinators to support the technical colleges and historically Black colleges and universities that make up the S.C. Coalition for Higher Education in Prison. Those staffers will track and support the incarcerated students as they study in prison and keep up with them after their release, helping them find housing, build career skills and connect with future educational opportunities. Such efforts — alongside the education itself — are meant to help former students stay out of prison after their release. About 17 percent of South Carolina inmates return to prison within three years, according to a
2024 report from the state Department of Corrections. "We will support them in getting a job, so they don't have to revert back to old habits," said Patrick Rodriguez, a co-chair of the South Carolina coalition and co-director of Columbia University's National Executive Council, which backs Healthy Routines. Education programs from colleges and universities in that coalition currently serve over 200 students inside about a dozen state prisons. Capacity is determined by the prisons' facilities, according to Vanessa Harris, another coalition co-chair. Those efforts let incarcerated people earn associate or bachelor's degrees, depending on the program, giving them a "second chance" after their convictions.
Students in such programs have
previously told The Post and Courier that they help give purpose to life behind bars, and
research also suggests that educational programs make participants less likely to end up back in prison, though the level of efficacy varies from study to study. Leaders of the colleges and universities who offer those programs said at a Feb. 17 announcement event in Columbia that the new funding will help them better create pathways from the correctional system to a career. "This partnership will enable our scholars to continue their academic journeys post-release, and make meaningful contributions to our community and to our world," Roslyn Clark Artis, the president of Benedict College, said of the grant from the Ascendium, a Wisconsin-based philanthropic organization. The Columbia college's prison work serves students at Broad River and Kershaw correctional facilities. Colleges included in the coalition include Benedict, Morris College, Claflin University, Voorhees University, Denmark Technical College, Trident Technical College, Northeastern Technical College, Midlands Technical College and the Technical College of the Lowcountry. Denmark Tech's classes at Allendale Correctional Center have expanded from their initial five students in 2021 to 18 currently enrolled, with even more interested, according to college President Willie Todd. Its students graduate in a convocation ceremony, academic regalia and all, and choose among associate degrees in science, technology and business. "Our goal is to help our students find their highest and truest selves," Todd said. Reach Ian Grenier at 803-968-1951. Follow him on X @IanGrenier1.
