After pell grants: The neoliberal assault on prisoners

Abstract

The number of prisoners in the United States has accelerated over the past thirty years, giving it the highest incarceration rate in the world. The rise in the prison rate has coincided with the ascendancy of neoliberal policies of governance. These include, deregulation of markets, reduction of welfare services, and harsh punitive measures for those who transgress social mores. Contained within neoliberal criminal policy is the proclivity to utilize prisons as a means to maintain societal inequities. This article examines the link between prisoner education policy and wider social and economic policies that disproportionately affect people of color and the poor. Neoliberal prisoner education is predicated, in part, upon the privileging of vocational training over liberal, higher learning. Current policy, typified by the recently passed Second Chance Act, reinforces hierarchies both in education and in the workplace by narrowly defining prisoners as human capital within the market.