'Game Changer' 

When the spring semester begins at Cal Poly Humboldt, a group of newly enrolled students in the university's Department of Communication will be taking their seats.

But instead of sitting in a classroom at the Arcata campus nestled in the redwoods, they'll be 85 miles north, behind the walls of Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City. They'll also be the first inmates serving time in a California maximum security yard — the most restricted level of incarceration in the state — with access to in-person instruction during their pursuit of a four-year degree.

It's a milestone years in the making, built on the foundation set by College of the Redwoods back in 2015 with the creation of the Pelican Bay Scholars program ("The Graduate," July 11, 2019). Over the ensuing years, hundreds of students at the correctional facility have taken community college classes, with more than 100 receiving an associate degree.

The first CPH Pelican Bay class — slated to graduate in 2028 — will be made up of about two dozen students who have graduated from the CR program.

Helping bring about the four-year degree option was Tony Wallin-Soto, a CPH graduate who knows first-hand the challenges of life behind bars and the difference that education opportunities can make for those currently — and formerly — in the prison system. He's been there himself.

Wallin-Soto says he began working on the concept while helping start Humboldt's chapter of Project Rebound — a program that helps enroll and support formerly incarcerated students in the California State University system — after struggling to find similar assistance when he arrived on campus in 2018.

"One of our goals," Wallin-Soto says, "was to connect the prison to the campus on a more formal level."

Opened in 1989 as California's first supermax prison, Pelican Bay has often been described as a place built to hold the "worst of the worst" and gained a reputation as being one of the toughest prisons in the nation.

A decade ago, the Del Norte County prison made international headlines when inmates organized hunger strikes to protest solitary confinement conditions that left some indefinitely housed in cramped cells for more than 22 hours a day, while denying them contact with their families or even other prisoners. Those protests — which spread to other facilities across the state — and a class action lawsuit brought by inmates led to concessions in their treatment that paved the way for CR's groundbreaking work.

Now overseeing CPH's Project Rebound program, Wallin-Soto says he believes the bachelor's degree offering will be a "game changer," not just for the students but the overall perception of the institution, as well.

Studies have shown that access to educational opportunities in prison substantially reduces a person's likelihood of returning and increases their ability to find work once released, benefiting not only the individual but their families and society as a whole.

"It's like a tiny pebble is an educational opportunity and it's dropped in a pond, and then that ripple effect is the person who's directly impacted, who's sitting in a classroom, in a prison classroom, and then those ripples are the person's parents or children and then the next one is the community, even the prison itself," Wallin-Soto says. "It creates a positive impact, having these education opportunities. it's just such a huge ripple effect."

Statistics bear that out. For example, formerly incarcerated students enrolled in Project Rebound at one of 14 CSU campuses with the program have outpaced their peers in grade point averages and graduation rates.

And while the state's recidivism rate is about 50 percent — meaning about half of those released from prison end up re-offending — Project Rebound students' rate is basically zero. The reduction in recidivism saves taxpayer money in the long term, with the average cost of incarcerating someone in a California prison around a $100,000 a year.

"And with a recidivism rate of less than 1 percent, Project Rebound has clearly established California as a national model — leveraging the largest four-year university system in the country to scale a life-affirming, cost-effective response to the extensive impacts of mass incarceration," Project Rebound's 2022 annual report states, noting "incarcerated scholars at Pelican Bay State Prison will soon have the opportunity to earn a B.A. in communication from Cal Poly Humboldt."

Getting the bachelor's program off the ground, Wallin-Soto says, was a collaborative effort that brought together everyone from Pelican Bay and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials to CR staff, CPH's Communcation's Department and buy-in at the university's highest levels.

To keep the effort on track, Wallin-Soto says he, CPH Transformative and Restorative Education Center Director Steve Ladwig, Project Rebound Youth Outreach Coordinator Mark Taylor and communication professor Maxwell Schnurer formed a four-person "B.A. team" to handle the nuts and bolts of getting the needed approvals.

From the beginning, he says, CPH Provost Jenn Capps played an integral role, saying when he approached her with the idea a few years ago, "She was supportive from the get-go and said, 'That's a great idea and we should be doing that,' and that was kind of the beginning."

In the university's announcement of the degree program, Capps describes CPH as a campus that defines itself "by who we include and not who we exclude."

"Creating access to education is one of our primary goals and launching the bachelor's degree at Pelican Bay, the first bachelor's degree in a Level IV yard in California, does just that — creates access to education and improves outcomes for people who are incarcerated and the communities they return to," she said.

At the same time he was pushing the idea, Wallin-Soto says a group of professors was already developing a prison degree program, noting the Communication Department was "phenomenally on board from the very beginning and really doing a lot of heavy lifting."

Another integral piece was what he described as the "amazing work" of the Pelican Bay Scholars Program.

Rory Johnson, dean of CR's Del Norte Education Center and Pelican Bay Scholars Program, lauded the new degree in the announcement as an "exciting" option for the 130 CR graduates currently at the prison.

"Working with our partners at Cal Poly Humboldt on this joint initiative has been a pleasure," Johnson said. "CR has gained valuable experience in establishing a successful college program in a maximum security prison and we're happy to collaborate with Cal Poly Humboldt to share our insights from the past eight or nine years to help them avoid reinventing the wheel."

When classes start, Pelican Bay State Prison will join eight other prisons across the state that offer degree programs in collaboration with colleges, including in-person and correspondence courses, a marked change from 2015 when CR first began offering in-person access at the Crescent City institution.

Before then, according to CDCR spokesperson Alia Cruz, the only options were independent study programs done through the mail. Now, she says, CDCR "partners with California's public higher education system to offer associate, bachelor's and master's degrees through the California community colleges, the California State University and the University of California."

"CDCR is committed to providing educational opportunities for every incarcerated person," Cruz told the Journal in an email. "The department is pleased to partner with Cal Poly Humboldt to expand bachelor's degree earning opportunities to incarcerated students at Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) beginning January 2024."

About 13.5 percent of the state's entire incarcerated population is enrolled in college courses, or approximately 130,000 individuals, according to CDCR.

Starting this summer, under federal legislation signed in December of 2020, incarcerated students across the country are once again eligible for Pell grants after being denied access to the financial aid program for nearly 30 years.

Wallin-Soto says that shift is important not just in providing a potential avenue for tuition funding but also the message it sends, "just in terms of letting students know, 'Hey, you do belong in the classroom ... this is something that should be provided to you, not only because you are human beings but on a recidivism level.'"

"It's just an astronomical difference between someone exiting a prison with a degree and having opportunities presented to them in society as opposed to reentering society without a degree and being placed with all these extra stipulations [from parole], and a lack of resources and opportunities," he says.

But, Wallin-Soto notes, since this is the first year of the federal program's reopening to inmates, there's likely to be some glitches and to avoid "putting all of our eggs in one basket," the CPH effort also sought out and received a $15,000 grant from the Humboldt Area Foundation and a three-year, $900,000 Department of Justice grant for higher education prison programs to pay for books, tuition and other expenses.

In addition, he says, CDCR is also providing tuition funding for prison B.A. programs in the state.

In the beginning, the Pelican Bay cohort will start out taking two courses, according to the university, with offerings slated to increase to four classes per semester as the program ramps up, noting students will have access to "the same curriculum and resources as those offered on campus."

Wallin-Soto says the students at Pelican Bay are excited for the program to start and the hope is to expand degree offerings over time.

The reasons for selecting communication as the inaugural program was three-fold, he says: CPH's department support, the versatility of the degree and the fact the major is offered at other prisons, so that if a student transfers to a lower security facility, "in theory, there would be no gap with their B.A. pathway." And, if released before graduation, they can continue their studies on campus.

Wallin-Soto says he believes the program will bring not just a new opportunity for the students and continue the cultural shift inside the prison that began when CR started offering classes but also a chance to dispel misconceptions and false narratives about Pelican Bay as a whole.

It will also help change the notion of what can be achieved behind a prison's walls, he says, adding that inside those walls are "some of the most brilliant, artistic, creative geniuses."

"And just having Cal Poly Humboldt be a presence in there to provide a B.A. program will have, again, ripple effects across the nation," Wallin-Soto says. "It's like one of those things where, 'Wow, this place that had such a bad negative descriptor now has this amazing, supported bachelor's program inside of it.' So, I hope, folks tend to think of it more like, 'OK, it was described as one thing before and now it's described as an educational hub that will provide opportunities for folks in there and hopefully allow [them] an easier time to get released and then onto campus, whatever that looks like."

Kimberly Wear (she/her) is the Journal's digital editor. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 323, or [email protected].