A Catholic Social Thought Defense of Liberal Arts in Prisons
By Raymond Moylan
The rise of mass incarceration in the United States has become a far-reaching and well-researched social problem. The US currently boasts the largest prison population in the world, spurring scholars such as Loic Wacquant and Michelle Alexander to investigate the nature of our extensive criminal justice system and its tendency to incarcerate impoverished communities of color.[1] High rates of crime and incarceration in marginalized communities combine with various other damaging factors like scarce employment opportunity or faulty education systems to create a milieu of disadvantage, decreasing opportunity for human flourishing.[2] In response to the criminal justice system’s propensity to perpetuate social inequality in its current mass incarceration iteration, a lively public debate concerning various methods of reform has appeared in national political discourse.
One promising reform strategy is the offering of higher education to incarcerated individuals as they serve their sentence. This approach holds much potential, offering to policymakers reduced recidivism rates, efficient spending of tax funds, and increased economic opportunity for inmates upon reentry.[3] However, we must approach the structuring and offering of these programs with the proper orientation, recalling the human beings at the center of this process. Put another way, this discussion should not devolve into a numbers game of investing in human capital to deflate the criminal justice system and, in turn, boost the economy with an invigorated labor force. Instead, I suggest framing discourse around the human person and their integral development, employing the conceptual vocabulary and rich tradition of Catholic Social Thought (CST). I contend that the principles of CST and the Catholic faith tradition impels citizens and policymakers to offer a liberal arts education to incarcerated persons.
Currently, the debate concerning correctional education revolves around differing logics of economic utilitarianism. Some may argue that offering restorative resources to prisoners creates a perverse incentive toward being incarcerated. How can prisons deter crime if individuals processed through the criminal justice system are granted opportunities that nonincarcerated people struggle to acquire? Instead of paying their debt to society, society writes a check to criminal offenders at the expense of innocent taxpayers. Thus, the greatest happiness for the greatest number is not being served because an undeserving segment of the population is receiving an inordinate amount of resources. Correctional education in general then should not be considered.
On the other hand, the immense number of individuals detained by the criminal justice system presents a tremendous waste of opportunity and human capital. The skills and labor of this population not only idles but also acts as a vacuum for public funds better spent elsewhere. Thus, rather than operate as a warehouse, correctional facilities should be interested in inmates building skills that they may productively put to use in the economy upon release. As the economy prospers from a revitalized labor force, so too does happiness for a greater number of people. Vocational training programs best fit this mindset because they prepare inmates for labor in a specific sector upon release.
Absent from both these arguments is consideration of the indelible dignity of the human persons living in prison, a central tenet of CST. The former proposes a suspension of human dignity due to the criminality of the offender in question. Portraying incarcerated people as wholly underserving foregoes the irreducibility of the image of God in the prisoner and can enable myriad dehumanizing practices. Conceptualizing incarcerated individuals as repositories of potential economic contribution similarly neglects their dignity. We must not understand them merely as future laborers to be equipped with particular skills before reentry. To do so would reduce them to mere means to an end of economic prosperity. Thus, these two philosophical orientations to prison education are inadequate. Neglecting to provide any rehabilitative opportunity to incarcerated persons would be a grave error. Similarly, modern approaches to prison education falter due to their preoccupation with measurable outcomes like recidivism rates and post-release employment. Though these are laudable effects, they do not constitute the goal toward which prison education must aim. Multiple questions arise from my objection: Toward what end should the criminal justice system at large be striving? Further, what role does prison education play in that schema?
First, CST asserts the nature of a just criminal justice system to be restorative and rehabilitative thereby protecting the dignity of both victim and perpetrator. The United States Catholic Conference (USCC) writes, “We believe punishment must have clear purposes: protecting society and rehabilitating those who violate the law.”[4] Conduct which threatens the lives, rights, and dignity of others is of course impermissible, and violators must be duly held accountable for their crimes. Therefore, CST affirms a community’s right to law enforcement and legitimate punishment. However, the faith tradition also provides stipulations for how such punishment must be structured, with ideals of justice, mercy, and human dignity at the center. The USCC further notes, “incarceration, however, should be about more than punishment…prisons must be places where offenders are challenged, encouraged and rewarded for efforts to change their behaviors and attitudes, and where they learn the skills needed for employment and life in community.”[5] Though incarcerated, CST requires that prisoners be given ample opportunity to flourish. If we accept incarceration to be the prevailing mode of punishment, it will be necessary to evaluate the degree to which our modern prison system and its educational programs comport with CST principles.
One available metric within the CST tradition is the degree to which a prison sentence allows for integral human development. This concept emerged in the wake of Vatican II in Pope Paul VI’s Popularum Progressio in response to a worldwide recognition of global wealth inequalities and disparate rates of national economic development. Integral human development as a concept grew further in John Paul II’s Solicitudo Rei Socialis and Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate. Throughout these encyclicals, the papacy asserts that the economic dimension of development should be accompanied in equal or greater part by spiritual, educational, and moral growth. Paul VI states, “Development cannot be limited to mere economic growth. In order to be authentic, it must be complete: integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man.”[6] Should development occupy itself entirely with economic growth, individuals would stray toward vices of avarice and greed, societies to materialism and consumerism. Though its use mostly remains in the context of international relations and global markets, integral human development applies to individual persons as much as nations. Thus, the attributes of integral human development provide an apt conceptual framework to legitimize education in prison.
Instead of the accumulation of wealth, the proper end of integral human development is a flourishing and free person. Paul VI explains the path to flourishing in connection to human potential: “In the design of God, every man is called upon to develop and fulfill himself, for every life is a vocation. At birth, everyone is granted, in germ, a set of aptitudes and qualities for him to bring to fruition.”[7] Humans reach the goal of development, a state of flourishing, by actualizing the full potential of their personhood. The papacy reinforces this as a holistic process. “Authentic human development concerns the whole of the person in every single dimension,” confirms Benedict XVI.[8] Thus to foster integral human development, per CST, one must consider educative processes which permeate every dimension of an individual’s personhood to best actualize their potential and achieve human flourishing.
Recall the goal of holistic development as not only flourishing human but also a free person. In Gravissimum Educationis, Paul VI argues students should “develop harmoniously their physical, moral, and intellectual endowments so that they may gradually acquire a mature sense of responsibility in striving endlessly to form their own lives properly and in pursuing true freedom.”[9] In the argument to promote integral human development through prison education, there exists an undeniable tension between the program’s aims and its material realities, namely: how can one aspire to develop free persons while students remain incarcerated? A simple response would be that the actualization process of an imprisoned student’s capacities could culminate at the moment of their release. So, they become physically free and can further pursue flourishing once they reenter society. This is an unsatisfying answer because it presumes integral human development to be terminal rather than a lifelong continuum of growth. Moreover, it excludes segments of the prison population.
A Catholic response to prison education is most challenged when considering incarcerated students living on death row or serving a life sentence without parole. It is true that their interminable sentence precludes these individuals from physical or societal freedom. However, education and integral human development also pursues moral and mental growth to foment a spiritual and intellectual freedom which transcends prison cells. Here, the Catholic argument for prison education most significantly departs from modern logics. Investing in education for incarcerated persons who will never reenter society will not yield any meaningful economic dividends. Nevertheless, it is virtuous to provide education to incarcerated persons for its own sake. Paul VI reminds us, “All men of every race, condition and age, since they enjoy the dignity of a human being, have an inalienable right to an education.”[10] The human dignity of incarcerated students impels policymakers and correctional administrators to foster integral human development in their prison population regardless of any forthcoming economic contribution. Thus, under the guidance of CST, prisons should aim to develop free and flourishing individuals through their education programming. Two questions remain: what educational structure best aligns with the ends of integral human development, and what social bodies are most fit to deliver that education?
The social science literature gives us reason to believe that a liberal arts education is most effective in serving modern aims for prison education. It achieves the lowest rates of recidivism, and can produce skilled, critical thinkers for the labor force.[11] Inside and outside the carceral setting, valuable professionals are groomed through a liberal arts education, and the pecuniary dividends of this investment are competitive with other education programs.[12] Yet, as argued earlier, this modern approach to the social problem forgets the human dignity of liberal arts pupils, especially incarcerated pupils where the economic return on investment is more closely scrutinized. Intellectual growth for its own sake should form the center of discourse around prison education, and the extrinsic goods like decreased recidivism should be considered fortunate incidental outcomes.
Provided that it is properly oriented to the intrinsic goods of learning, a liberal arts education for incarcerated persons is most consonant with CST. Its curriculum superbly comports with the ends of integral human development: a free and flourishing person. The liberal arts find their etymological roots in the Latin liber or liberalis, which translates to free or relating to freedom, respectively.[13] This curriculum is characterized by a pattern of free inquiry, an uninhibited exchange of ideas, and an openness to creative expression. Moreover, by actualizing pupils’ intellectual capacities, it creates a liberating experience in which students can freely, critically, and responsibly encounter the world around them. Admittedly, freedom as a tenet of liberal arts education encounters the same friction discussed above when it is considered in a carceral context. Discourses about freedom and liberation can seem hollow when set against a backdrop of obvious confinement. However, the prevailingly low educational attainment among incarcerated persons prompts one to believe this population to be the most eligible for the boons of a liberal arts education.[14] It is not unreasonable to believe that the abbreviated educational journey of many incarcerated persons restricts their ability to pursue a full and flourishing life. Therefore, the liberation element included in the development of human intellect can attend to a dearth of educational attainment in the current prison population. In his autobiography, Malcolm X reflects on this liberating aspect of his education in prison: “Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened…In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.”[15] Intellectual growth through liberal arts education can be transformative and cultivate a freedom of thought and expression previously unavailable to undereducated incarcerated individuals.
Second, CST’s emphasis on holism in the concept of integral human development is echoed in the structure of a liberal arts education, the roots of which date back to classical antiquity. Traditionally built around the arts of word and of number or the trivium and quadrivium, the liberal arts strive to engage and develop all the different facets and capacities of the human intellect. Considered the foundation of both the classical and medieval education, the trivium includes logic, grammar, and rhetoric. These three disciplines instill in pupils the abilities to critically think and communicate about reality through language. Disciplines of the quadrivium – arithmetic, geometry, harmonics, and astronomy – first emerge in Plato’s Republic as essential components of a philosopher’s education. They follow the trivium and challenge a thinker to conceptualize numbers in the abstract as well as in space and time. For Plato, proficiency in the seven liberal arts enables dialectical reasoning, an essential method for diving truth about the forms.[16] Though not through the trivium and quadrivium, Aristotle also identifies rational activity as integral to the human person as our characteristic activity or function. Pursuance of eudaimonia or the highest good is premised on the rational part of the human soul acting in accordance with virtue.[17] If we consider Aristotelian eudaimonia to be an appropriate analog for human flourishing, then development of a person’s rational and moral capacity becomes imperative. The liberal arts are best suited to do this for they empower and actualize the intellect and creativity embedded in our personhood by virtue of being created in the image and likeness of God. In sum, the liberal arts provide the freeing and holistic educational curriculum demanded by CST’s integral human development in which the learner grows intellectually and morally to fully realize their potential as a human person.
Just as CST has guided the philosophical underpinnings of a liberal arts education in prison, it also offers insight on the pragmatics of implementing such programs. Currently, higher education programs in US prisons are scattered and far from comprehensive.[18] The presence or absence of such programs in correctional facilities is dictated by the availability of a partnering academic institution. Rightly so, the provision of a liberal arts education should come from the social bodies, like universities and colleges, that are most equipped to offer rigorously and proficiently the curriculum that best fosters integral human development. Doing otherwise would violate the CST principle of subsidiarity. In Quadragesimo Anno, Pius XI summarizes subsidiarity: “It is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and a disturbance of right order to transfer to the larger and higher collectivity functions which can be performed and provided for by lesser and subordinate bodies.”[19] Preservation of social order is predicated on issues being resolved at the lowest level possible. Local communities with the most knowledge of a problem can best address it. The state should only intervene once the scope of a problem exceeds a community’s capacity. Partnering academic institutions, public or private, certainly can best perform the function of providing higher education to incarcerated inmates. Delegating the task of creating and offering a liberal arts curriculum to the education division of correctional facilities would constitute an unnecessary and condemnable intervention on the part of the state for CST. The principle of subsidiarity would advise that existing universities and colleges offer this service; however, as it stands, the reach of such programs is sparse.
In 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act revoked Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated persons, evacuating federal funding for higher education initiatives in prisons. Since then, the financial burden for providing higher education to prisoners has fallen on either correctional facility budgets or partnering academic institution resource pools. Notably, some prison education programs succeed in their efforts despite these financial throes. The Saint Louis University Prison Education Program, for example, offers an Associate of Arts degree to incarcerated persons and staff members at a correctional facility near St. Louis in Bonne Terre, MO. This degree constitutes the foundation to a liberal arts education, and the university offers it without requiring tuition payments from incarcerated or staff students. Instead, it relies on university resources as well as significant fundraising campaigns to remain in operation. Here is a case where the appropriate social body can both perform and provide for the function of providing liberal arts education to incarcerated students; however, SLU’s program does not constitute the norm. Removal of funds in 1994 precipitated the closing of several prison education programs, and continued scarcity of funds for higher education in prisons actively complicates the establishment of such programs currently.[20] In many cases, the scope of the US’s overgrown prison population exceeds what can be accomplished at subsidiary levels. Recently though, federal movement to reinstate Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated persons has materialized in Congress as the proposed Restoring Education and Learning Act.[21] Making Pell monies available to incarcerated students again would significantly enable programs for higher education in prison to prolife nationwide. It would not erode the principle of subsidiarity; rather, it would empower subsidiary social bodies to provide functions that the state has shown itself less than capable of carrying out, namely a rehabilitative and restorative criminal justice system.
From a CST perspective, the proper end of a criminal justice system should be to foster inmate growth to becoming free and flourishing humans, capable of actualizing their intellectual and moral capacities. Integral human development conceptually encapsulates this process, promoting holistic maturation of a human to fully realize their personhood, formed in the image and likeness of God. The traditional liberal arts curriculum serves this end well offering disciplines which stimulate intellectual growth and creative expression. Subsidiary bodies like existing universities and colleges are best fit to provide such an education to incarcerated persons, though they should be supported by state funds. Modern arguments also approach the same conclusion: that a liberal arts education should be offered to incarcerated persons; however, their focus on extrinsic outcomes like decreased recidivism or an improved economy foregoes the indelible human dignity and integral human development central to a liberal arts education. So, among the various criminal justice reform strategies appearing in national discourse, the promotion of liberal arts education in correctional facilities finds a philosophical mooring in the CST tradition, provided that the integral human development of the incarcerated students remains a guiding principle for such programs.
Works Cited
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2012.
Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, encyclical letter, 2009, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016.
Davis, Lois M., Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele, Jessica Saunders, and Jeremy NV Miles. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education: A Meta-analysis of Programs that Provide Education to Incarcerated Adults. Rand Corporation, 2013.
Harlow, Caroline Wolf. “Education and Correctional Populations. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report.” Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf
Hill, Catharine B. and Elizabeth Davidson Pisacreta, “The Economic Benefits and Costs of a Liberal Arts Education.” The Mellon Foundation, 2019. https://mellon.org/resources/news/articles/economic-benefits-and-costs-liberal-arts-education/.
Paul VI, Popularum Progressio, encyclical letter, 1967, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016.
Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis, encyclical letter, Vatican website, October 28, 1965, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_gravissimum-educationis_en.html.
Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, encyclical letter, 1967, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016.
“S.1074 – Restoring Education and Learning Act of 2019.” Congress.gov, accessed May 12, 2019, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1074/text.
Simpson, D.P. Cassell’s Latin Dictionary. New York: Macmillan, 1977.
Ubah, Charles B.A. “Abolition of Pell Grants for Higher Education of Prisoners: Examining Antecedents and Consequences.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 39, no. 2 (2004): 73-85.
United States Catholic Conference. Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice. Washington, D.C.: US Catholic Conference, Inc., 2000.
Wacquant, Loic. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.
Wakefield, Sara and Christopher Uggen. “Incarceration and Stratification.” Annual Review of Sociology 36, (2010): 387-406.
[1] For a sociological account of the social injustices and discriminatory practices embedded in the modern US criminal justice system, see Loic Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). and Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012).
[2] Sara Wakefield and Christopher Uggen. “Incarceration and Stratification,” Annual Review of Sociology 36, (2010): 387-406.
[3] Lois M. Davis, Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele, Jessica Saunders, and Jeremy NV Miles. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education: A Meta-analysis of Programs that Provide Education to Incarcerated Adults. Rand Corporation, 2013.
[4] United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice (Washington, D.C.: US Catholic Conference, Inc., 2000), 16.
[5] Ibid., 39.
[6] Paul VI, Popularum Progressio, encyclical letter, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016), 1967, sec. 14.
[7] Ibid., sec. 15
[8] Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, encyclical letter, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016), 2009, sec. 11.
[9] Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis, encyclical letter, Vatican website, October 28, 1965, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_gravissimum-educationis_en.html, sec. 7.
[10] Ibid., sec. 5
[11] Lois M. Davis, Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele, Jessica Saunders, and Jeremy NV Miles. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education: A Meta-analysis of Programs that Provide Education to Incarcerated Adults. Rand Corporation, 2013.
[12] Catharine B. Hill & Elizabeth Davidson Pisacreta, “The Economic Benefits and Costs of a Liberal Arts Education” (2019) The Mellon Foundation, https://mellon.org/resources/news/articles/economic-benefits-and-costs-liberal-arts-education/.
[13] Translation found in D.P. Simpson, Cassell’s Latin Dictionary (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 344.
[14] Caroline Wolf Harlow. “Education and Correctional Populations. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report.” (2003). https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf.
[15] It should be noted here that Malcolm X’s education while in prison was mostly self-taught, not the product of a liberal arts curriculum. Though, according to his autobiography, his reading habits while incarcerated were prodigious and far exceeded the reading load found in a traditional liberal arts degree. Thus, we can find his liberation-through-education narrative sufficiently comparable for this argument.
Malcolm X and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999), 176.
[16] For a more extensive discussion on the curriculum of the quadrivium in relation the education of the kallipolis’s philosopher-king, see Plato’s Republic, Book VII.
[17] For a more thorough treatment of rationality as the characteristic activity of humans in relation to virtue, see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097a15 – 1103a10.
[18] Laura E. Gorgol and Brian A Sponsler. “Unlocking Potential: Results of a National Survey of Postsecondary Education in State Prisons.” Washington D.C.: Institute for Higher Education Policy (2011).
[19] Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, encyclical letter, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016), 1967, sec. 79, emphasis mine.
[20] Charles B.A. Ubah. “Abolition of Pell Grants for Higher Education of Prisoners: Examining Antecedents and Consequences.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 39, no. 2 (2004): 73-85.
[21] “S.1074 – Restoring Education and Learning Act of 2019.” Congress.gov, accessed May 12, 2019, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1074/text
The rise of mass incarceration in the United States has become a far-reaching and well-researched social problem. The US currently boasts the largest prison population in the world, spurring scholars such as Loic Wacquant and Michelle Alexander to investigate the nature of our extensive criminal justice system and its tendency to incarcerate impoverished communities of color.[1] High rates of crime and incarceration in marginalized communities combine with various other damaging factors like scarce employment opportunity or faulty education systems to create a milieu of disadvantage, decreasing opportunity for human flourishing.[2] In response to the criminal justice system’s propensity to perpetuate social inequality in its current mass incarceration iteration, a lively public debate concerning various methods of reform has appeared in national political discourse.
One promising reform strategy is the offering of higher education to incarcerated individuals as they serve their sentence. This approach holds much potential, offering to policymakers reduced recidivism rates, efficient spending of tax funds, and increased economic opportunity for inmates upon reentry.[3] However, we must approach the structuring and offering of these programs with the proper orientation, recalling the human beings at the center of this process. Put another way, this discussion should not devolve into a numbers game of investing in human capital to deflate the criminal justice system and, in turn, boost the economy with an invigorated labor force. Instead, I suggest framing discourse around the human person and their integral development, employing the conceptual vocabulary and rich tradition of Catholic Social Thought (CST). I contend that the principles of CST and the Catholic faith tradition impels citizens and policymakers to offer a liberal arts education to incarcerated persons.
Currently, the debate concerning correctional education revolves around differing logics of economic utilitarianism. Some may argue that offering restorative resources to prisoners creates a perverse incentive toward being incarcerated. How can prisons deter crime if individuals processed through the criminal justice system are granted opportunities that nonincarcerated people struggle to acquire? Instead of paying their debt to society, society writes a check to criminal offenders at the expense of innocent taxpayers. Thus, the greatest happiness for the greatest number is not being served because an undeserving segment of the population is receiving an inordinate amount of resources. Correctional education in general then should not be considered.
On the other hand, the immense number of individuals detained by the criminal justice system presents a tremendous waste of opportunity and human capital. The skills and labor of this population not only idles but also acts as a vacuum for public funds better spent elsewhere. Thus, rather than operate as a warehouse, correctional facilities should be interested in inmates building skills that they may productively put to use in the economy upon release. As the economy prospers from a revitalized labor force, so too does happiness for a greater number of people. Vocational training programs best fit this mindset because they prepare inmates for labor in a specific sector upon release.
Absent from both these arguments is consideration of the indelible dignity of the human persons living in prison, a central tenet of CST. The former proposes a suspension of human dignity due to the criminality of the offender in question. Portraying incarcerated people as wholly underserving foregoes the irreducibility of the image of God in the prisoner and can enable myriad dehumanizing practices. Conceptualizing incarcerated individuals as repositories of potential economic contribution similarly neglects their dignity. We must not understand them merely as future laborers to be equipped with particular skills before reentry. To do so would reduce them to mere means to an end of economic prosperity. Thus, these two philosophical orientations to prison education are inadequate. Neglecting to provide any rehabilitative opportunity to incarcerated persons would be a grave error. Similarly, modern approaches to prison education falter due to their preoccupation with measurable outcomes like recidivism rates and post-release employment. Though these are laudable effects, they do not constitute the goal toward which prison education must aim. Multiple questions arise from my objection: Toward what end should the criminal justice system at large be striving? Further, what role does prison education play in that schema?
First, CST asserts the nature of a just criminal justice system to be restorative and rehabilitative thereby protecting the dignity of both victim and perpetrator. The United States Catholic Conference (USCC) writes, “We believe punishment must have clear purposes: protecting society and rehabilitating those who violate the law.”[4] Conduct which threatens the lives, rights, and dignity of others is of course impermissible, and violators must be duly held accountable for their crimes. Therefore, CST affirms a community’s right to law enforcement and legitimate punishment. However, the faith tradition also provides stipulations for how such punishment must be structured, with ideals of justice, mercy, and human dignity at the center. The USCC further notes, “incarceration, however, should be about more than punishment…prisons must be places where offenders are challenged, encouraged and rewarded for efforts to change their behaviors and attitudes, and where they learn the skills needed for employment and life in community.”[5] Though incarcerated, CST requires that prisoners be given ample opportunity to flourish. If we accept incarceration to be the prevailing mode of punishment, it will be necessary to evaluate the degree to which our modern prison system and its educational programs comport with CST principles.
One available metric within the CST tradition is the degree to which a prison sentence allows for integral human development. This concept emerged in the wake of Vatican II in Pope Paul VI’s Popularum Progressio in response to a worldwide recognition of global wealth inequalities and disparate rates of national economic development. Integral human development as a concept grew further in John Paul II’s Solicitudo Rei Socialis and Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate. Throughout these encyclicals, the papacy asserts that the economic dimension of development should be accompanied in equal or greater part by spiritual, educational, and moral growth. Paul VI states, “Development cannot be limited to mere economic growth. In order to be authentic, it must be complete: integral, that is, it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man.”[6] Should development occupy itself entirely with economic growth, individuals would stray toward vices of avarice and greed, societies to materialism and consumerism. Though its use mostly remains in the context of international relations and global markets, integral human development applies to individual persons as much as nations. Thus, the attributes of integral human development provide an apt conceptual framework to legitimize education in prison.
Instead of the accumulation of wealth, the proper end of integral human development is a flourishing and free person. Paul VI explains the path to flourishing in connection to human potential: “In the design of God, every man is called upon to develop and fulfill himself, for every life is a vocation. At birth, everyone is granted, in germ, a set of aptitudes and qualities for him to bring to fruition.”[7] Humans reach the goal of development, a state of flourishing, by actualizing the full potential of their personhood. The papacy reinforces this as a holistic process. “Authentic human development concerns the whole of the person in every single dimension,” confirms Benedict XVI.[8] Thus to foster integral human development, per CST, one must consider educative processes which permeate every dimension of an individual’s personhood to best actualize their potential and achieve human flourishing.
Recall the goal of holistic development as not only flourishing human but also a free person. In Gravissimum Educationis, Paul VI argues students should “develop harmoniously their physical, moral, and intellectual endowments so that they may gradually acquire a mature sense of responsibility in striving endlessly to form their own lives properly and in pursuing true freedom.”[9] In the argument to promote integral human development through prison education, there exists an undeniable tension between the program’s aims and its material realities, namely: how can one aspire to develop free persons while students remain incarcerated? A simple response would be that the actualization process of an imprisoned student’s capacities could culminate at the moment of their release. So, they become physically free and can further pursue flourishing once they reenter society. This is an unsatisfying answer because it presumes integral human development to be terminal rather than a lifelong continuum of growth. Moreover, it excludes segments of the prison population.
A Catholic response to prison education is most challenged when considering incarcerated students living on death row or serving a life sentence without parole. It is true that their interminable sentence precludes these individuals from physical or societal freedom. However, education and integral human development also pursues moral and mental growth to foment a spiritual and intellectual freedom which transcends prison cells. Here, the Catholic argument for prison education most significantly departs from modern logics. Investing in education for incarcerated persons who will never reenter society will not yield any meaningful economic dividends. Nevertheless, it is virtuous to provide education to incarcerated persons for its own sake. Paul VI reminds us, “All men of every race, condition and age, since they enjoy the dignity of a human being, have an inalienable right to an education.”[10] The human dignity of incarcerated students impels policymakers and correctional administrators to foster integral human development in their prison population regardless of any forthcoming economic contribution. Thus, under the guidance of CST, prisons should aim to develop free and flourishing individuals through their education programming. Two questions remain: what educational structure best aligns with the ends of integral human development, and what social bodies are most fit to deliver that education?
The social science literature gives us reason to believe that a liberal arts education is most effective in serving modern aims for prison education. It achieves the lowest rates of recidivism, and can produce skilled, critical thinkers for the labor force.[11] Inside and outside the carceral setting, valuable professionals are groomed through a liberal arts education, and the pecuniary dividends of this investment are competitive with other education programs.[12] Yet, as argued earlier, this modern approach to the social problem forgets the human dignity of liberal arts pupils, especially incarcerated pupils where the economic return on investment is more closely scrutinized. Intellectual growth for its own sake should form the center of discourse around prison education, and the extrinsic goods like decreased recidivism should be considered fortunate incidental outcomes.
Provided that it is properly oriented to the intrinsic goods of learning, a liberal arts education for incarcerated persons is most consonant with CST. Its curriculum superbly comports with the ends of integral human development: a free and flourishing person. The liberal arts find their etymological roots in the Latin liber or liberalis, which translates to free or relating to freedom, respectively.[13] This curriculum is characterized by a pattern of free inquiry, an uninhibited exchange of ideas, and an openness to creative expression. Moreover, by actualizing pupils’ intellectual capacities, it creates a liberating experience in which students can freely, critically, and responsibly encounter the world around them. Admittedly, freedom as a tenet of liberal arts education encounters the same friction discussed above when it is considered in a carceral context. Discourses about freedom and liberation can seem hollow when set against a backdrop of obvious confinement. However, the prevailingly low educational attainment among incarcerated persons prompts one to believe this population to be the most eligible for the boons of a liberal arts education.[14] It is not unreasonable to believe that the abbreviated educational journey of many incarcerated persons restricts their ability to pursue a full and flourishing life. Therefore, the liberation element included in the development of human intellect can attend to a dearth of educational attainment in the current prison population. In his autobiography, Malcolm X reflects on this liberating aspect of his education in prison: “Anyone who has read a great deal can imagine the new world that opened…In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.”[15] Intellectual growth through liberal arts education can be transformative and cultivate a freedom of thought and expression previously unavailable to undereducated incarcerated individuals.
Second, CST’s emphasis on holism in the concept of integral human development is echoed in the structure of a liberal arts education, the roots of which date back to classical antiquity. Traditionally built around the arts of word and of number or the trivium and quadrivium, the liberal arts strive to engage and develop all the different facets and capacities of the human intellect. Considered the foundation of both the classical and medieval education, the trivium includes logic, grammar, and rhetoric. These three disciplines instill in pupils the abilities to critically think and communicate about reality through language. Disciplines of the quadrivium – arithmetic, geometry, harmonics, and astronomy – first emerge in Plato’s Republic as essential components of a philosopher’s education. They follow the trivium and challenge a thinker to conceptualize numbers in the abstract as well as in space and time. For Plato, proficiency in the seven liberal arts enables dialectical reasoning, an essential method for diving truth about the forms.[16] Though not through the trivium and quadrivium, Aristotle also identifies rational activity as integral to the human person as our characteristic activity or function. Pursuance of eudaimonia or the highest good is premised on the rational part of the human soul acting in accordance with virtue.[17] If we consider Aristotelian eudaimonia to be an appropriate analog for human flourishing, then development of a person’s rational and moral capacity becomes imperative. The liberal arts are best suited to do this for they empower and actualize the intellect and creativity embedded in our personhood by virtue of being created in the image and likeness of God. In sum, the liberal arts provide the freeing and holistic educational curriculum demanded by CST’s integral human development in which the learner grows intellectually and morally to fully realize their potential as a human person.
Just as CST has guided the philosophical underpinnings of a liberal arts education in prison, it also offers insight on the pragmatics of implementing such programs. Currently, higher education programs in US prisons are scattered and far from comprehensive.[18] The presence or absence of such programs in correctional facilities is dictated by the availability of a partnering academic institution. Rightly so, the provision of a liberal arts education should come from the social bodies, like universities and colleges, that are most equipped to offer rigorously and proficiently the curriculum that best fosters integral human development. Doing otherwise would violate the CST principle of subsidiarity. In Quadragesimo Anno, Pius XI summarizes subsidiarity: “It is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and a disturbance of right order to transfer to the larger and higher collectivity functions which can be performed and provided for by lesser and subordinate bodies.”[19] Preservation of social order is predicated on issues being resolved at the lowest level possible. Local communities with the most knowledge of a problem can best address it. The state should only intervene once the scope of a problem exceeds a community’s capacity. Partnering academic institutions, public or private, certainly can best perform the function of providing higher education to incarcerated inmates. Delegating the task of creating and offering a liberal arts curriculum to the education division of correctional facilities would constitute an unnecessary and condemnable intervention on the part of the state for CST. The principle of subsidiarity would advise that existing universities and colleges offer this service; however, as it stands, the reach of such programs is sparse.
In 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act revoked Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated persons, evacuating federal funding for higher education initiatives in prisons. Since then, the financial burden for providing higher education to prisoners has fallen on either correctional facility budgets or partnering academic institution resource pools. Notably, some prison education programs succeed in their efforts despite these financial throes. The Saint Louis University Prison Education Program, for example, offers an Associate of Arts degree to incarcerated persons and staff members at a correctional facility near St. Louis in Bonne Terre, MO. This degree constitutes the foundation to a liberal arts education, and the university offers it without requiring tuition payments from incarcerated or staff students. Instead, it relies on university resources as well as significant fundraising campaigns to remain in operation. Here is a case where the appropriate social body can both perform and provide for the function of providing liberal arts education to incarcerated students; however, SLU’s program does not constitute the norm. Removal of funds in 1994 precipitated the closing of several prison education programs, and continued scarcity of funds for higher education in prisons actively complicates the establishment of such programs currently.[20] In many cases, the scope of the US’s overgrown prison population exceeds what can be accomplished at subsidiary levels. Recently though, federal movement to reinstate Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated persons has materialized in Congress as the proposed Restoring Education and Learning Act.[21] Making Pell monies available to incarcerated students again would significantly enable programs for higher education in prison to prolife nationwide. It would not erode the principle of subsidiarity; rather, it would empower subsidiary social bodies to provide functions that the state has shown itself less than capable of carrying out, namely a rehabilitative and restorative criminal justice system.
From a CST perspective, the proper end of a criminal justice system should be to foster inmate growth to becoming free and flourishing humans, capable of actualizing their intellectual and moral capacities. Integral human development conceptually encapsulates this process, promoting holistic maturation of a human to fully realize their personhood, formed in the image and likeness of God. The traditional liberal arts curriculum serves this end well offering disciplines which stimulate intellectual growth and creative expression. Subsidiary bodies like existing universities and colleges are best fit to provide such an education to incarcerated persons, though they should be supported by state funds. Modern arguments also approach the same conclusion: that a liberal arts education should be offered to incarcerated persons; however, their focus on extrinsic outcomes like decreased recidivism or an improved economy foregoes the indelible human dignity and integral human development central to a liberal arts education. So, among the various criminal justice reform strategies appearing in national discourse, the promotion of liberal arts education in correctional facilities finds a philosophical mooring in the CST tradition, provided that the integral human development of the incarcerated students remains a guiding principle for such programs.
Works Cited
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2012.
Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, encyclical letter, 2009, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016.
Davis, Lois M., Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele, Jessica Saunders, and Jeremy NV Miles. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education: A Meta-analysis of Programs that Provide Education to Incarcerated Adults. Rand Corporation, 2013.
Harlow, Caroline Wolf. “Education and Correctional Populations. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report.” Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2003. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf
Hill, Catharine B. and Elizabeth Davidson Pisacreta, “The Economic Benefits and Costs of a Liberal Arts Education.” The Mellon Foundation, 2019. https://mellon.org/resources/news/articles/economic-benefits-and-costs-liberal-arts-education/.
Paul VI, Popularum Progressio, encyclical letter, 1967, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016.
Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis, encyclical letter, Vatican website, October 28, 1965, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_gravissimum-educationis_en.html.
Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, encyclical letter, 1967, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016.
“S.1074 – Restoring Education and Learning Act of 2019.” Congress.gov, accessed May 12, 2019, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1074/text.
Simpson, D.P. Cassell’s Latin Dictionary. New York: Macmillan, 1977.
Ubah, Charles B.A. “Abolition of Pell Grants for Higher Education of Prisoners: Examining Antecedents and Consequences.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 39, no. 2 (2004): 73-85.
United States Catholic Conference. Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice. Washington, D.C.: US Catholic Conference, Inc., 2000.
Wacquant, Loic. Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.
Wakefield, Sara and Christopher Uggen. “Incarceration and Stratification.” Annual Review of Sociology 36, (2010): 387-406.
[1] For a sociological account of the social injustices and discriminatory practices embedded in the modern US criminal justice system, see Loic Wacquant, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). and Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012).
[2] Sara Wakefield and Christopher Uggen. “Incarceration and Stratification,” Annual Review of Sociology 36, (2010): 387-406.
[3] Lois M. Davis, Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele, Jessica Saunders, and Jeremy NV Miles. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education: A Meta-analysis of Programs that Provide Education to Incarcerated Adults. Rand Corporation, 2013.
[4] United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice (Washington, D.C.: US Catholic Conference, Inc., 2000), 16.
[5] Ibid., 39.
[6] Paul VI, Popularum Progressio, encyclical letter, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016), 1967, sec. 14.
[7] Ibid., sec. 15
[8] Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, encyclical letter, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016), 2009, sec. 11.
[9] Paul VI, Gravissimum Educationis, encyclical letter, Vatican website, October 28, 1965, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_gravissimum-educationis_en.html, sec. 7.
[10] Ibid., sec. 5
[11] Lois M. Davis, Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele, Jessica Saunders, and Jeremy NV Miles. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education: A Meta-analysis of Programs that Provide Education to Incarcerated Adults. Rand Corporation, 2013.
[12] Catharine B. Hill & Elizabeth Davidson Pisacreta, “The Economic Benefits and Costs of a Liberal Arts Education” (2019) The Mellon Foundation, https://mellon.org/resources/news/articles/economic-benefits-and-costs-liberal-arts-education/.
[13] Translation found in D.P. Simpson, Cassell’s Latin Dictionary (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 344.
[14] Caroline Wolf Harlow. “Education and Correctional Populations. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report.” (2003). https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf.
[15] It should be noted here that Malcolm X’s education while in prison was mostly self-taught, not the product of a liberal arts curriculum. Though, according to his autobiography, his reading habits while incarcerated were prodigious and far exceeded the reading load found in a traditional liberal arts degree. Thus, we can find his liberation-through-education narrative sufficiently comparable for this argument.
Malcolm X and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999), 176.
[16] For a more extensive discussion on the curriculum of the quadrivium in relation the education of the kallipolis’s philosopher-king, see Plato’s Republic, Book VII.
[17] For a more thorough treatment of rationality as the characteristic activity of humans in relation to virtue, see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097a15 – 1103a10.
[18] Laura E. Gorgol and Brian A Sponsler. “Unlocking Potential: Results of a National Survey of Postsecondary Education in State Prisons.” Washington D.C.: Institute for Higher Education Policy (2011).
[19] Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, encyclical letter, in Catholic Social Thought: Encyclicals and Documents from Pope Leo XIII to Pope Francis, ed. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016), 1967, sec. 79, emphasis mine.
[20] Charles B.A. Ubah. “Abolition of Pell Grants for Higher Education of Prisoners: Examining Antecedents and Consequences.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 39, no. 2 (2004): 73-85.
[21] “S.1074 – Restoring Education and Learning Act of 2019.” Congress.gov, accessed May 12, 2019, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1074/text