Dr.Baz Dreisinger spoke to the first national conference on Transformative Education for Successful Reentry, sharing her expertise and findings on the role and effects of higher education on inmates’ behavior, rehabilitation, and recidivism rates, as well as its importance in the future development of a criminal justice system.
We strongly believe that drugs have snatched freedom from our streets, jobs, and lives of people we love, even our children. This continues to be a significant problem around the world. President Rodrigo Duterte has determined to put an end to the drug menace in the Philippines; as a result, in addition to the thousands who have been killed, there is mass incarceration since more than three million drug users have surrendered, joining those waiting in jail even years for their court hearing. The current prison system is neither designed for reform nor for rehabilitation. Most of the inmates will be freed and will go back into society. The question is will that be a one-way trip? To remain free, they must succeed when they re-enter. Currently, the only modus operandi for the incarcerated is survival. We believe education is vital to the overall development of inmates and can undergird rehabilitation in correctional facilities.
The Social Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Business Institute, Inc. (SETBI), through its College Education Behind Bars program, partnered with the University of Southeastern Philippines (USEP) and the Philippine Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), l hold a two-day conference on May 16 -17, 2018, in Davao City at the University of Southeastern Philippines to discussed and exchange ideas about the impact of college education on inmates.With the theme “Hope for restoration; today’s inmate is tomorrow’s neighbor” this forum promoted collaboration between five pillars of the criminal justice system, NGOs, community leaders, academic leaders, the Department of Higher Education, Jail Management and Penology administrators, and criminal justice practitioners to share experiences, recommendations, and the possible impact of college education on inmates’ behavior, reentry society, and recidivism.
Dr. Dreisinger works at the intersection of race, crime, culture and justice. She earned her Ph.D. in English from Columbia University, specializing in American and African-American studies. At John Jay she is the Founding Academic Director of John Jay’s Prison-to-College Pipeline program, which offers college courses and reentry planning to incarcerated men at Otisville Correctional Facility, and broadly works to increase access to higher education for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals. Dr. Dreisinger’s book Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World (2016) was heralded by the New York Times, NPR and many more, and was named a notable book of 2016 by the Washington Post. Professor Dreisinger moonlights as a journalist and critic, writing about Caribbean culture, race-related issues, travel, music and pop culture for such outlets as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal, and producing on-air segments about music and global culture for National Public Radio (NPR). Her first book Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture (2008) was featured in the New York Times and on NPR and CNN. Together with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Peter Spirer, Professor Dreisinger produced and wrote the two nationally aired documentaries about hip-hop, criminal justice and the prison industrial complex. She regularly speaks about justice reform and prison issues on popular news media and in international settings.
Dr. Dreisinger was named a 2017-2018 Global Fulbright Scholar and is working to internationally replicate the Prison-to-College Pipeline, with a focus on the Caribbean and South Africa. She is currently working on a road map for how prison-to-college pipelines and restorative justice can replace mass incarceration as a system of justice.
