Unintended scholars: Prisoners who qualified for Guinn program may soon lose benefit

Jennifer Knight

Friday, June 15, 2001 | 4:36 a.m.

Randy Rogers is an oversight.

A prisoner for 20 years, he has been added to a list of society's throwaways. Lines stretch across his face when he winces, recalling the sins that brought him to the Southern Desert Correctional Center in Jean.

"I try not to think about those things anymore," he said. "They're gone to me."

Rogers, 37, stole cars, then added to his sentence by escaping from prison. For his crimes, his freedom and youth were taken away.

Now he fears the future he dreamed of will be taken from him because of Senate Bill 113, signed by Gov. Kenny Guinn on May 31.

The legislation effectively closes a loophole in the Millennium Scholarship program that allowed prisoners to qualify for the benefit.

"It was an unintended consequence (to have prisoners qualify)," said Guinn, who came up with the idea for the scholarship. "Our concept was for graduating seniors coming out of Nevada high schools."

It is unclear whether inmates such as Rogers will have their scholarships rescinded, Susan Moore, Millennium Scholarship director, said.

"If you're going to take away my right for education, you may as well take away my life," said Rogers, who has a 3.5 grade point average after a year as a Millennium scholar and plans to pursue a master's of business administration after his release in 2004.

SB113 doesn't explicitly prohibit prisoners from receiving the scholarship, but makes it more difficult for most to qualify.

The new requirements rule out those with a General Educational Development diploma. The legislation also affects adult-education students who are not incarcerated.

Before the bill's passage, students needed only a minimum B average, two years of residency in Nevada and a high school diploma or GED.

SB113 specifies that students be enrolled and scheduled to graduate high school after May 1, 2000. Those who don't meet the deadline will be given five years to complete their diploma.

This small window of time still allows a few inmates to qualify for the scholarship, but most would be locked out because 57 percent of the prison population does not have a high school diploma or its equivalent.

Since the program began last year, 39 prisoners have qualified for the scholarship, which came from the state's tobacco settlement money. Of those who qualified, 13 prisoners have taken advantage of the scholarship, Moore said.

Punishment and prison may seem at odds with education and self-improvement, and that pull has raised debate over whether this group of unintended scholars should be rehabilitated in this way.

Of the nearly 10,000 inmates in Nevada's prison system, 48 percent function below the eighth grade level. Of that amount, 10 percent function below the fourth grade level, said Marta Hall, an education consultant with the Nevada Department of Prisons.

The Millennium Scholarship offered those who wanted the opportunity a chance to change.

When Eric Williams found out that he could go to college while in prison, it became a way for the days to slip away more easily. Then it became a way to stop the bad thoughts, the anger that put him behind bars in the first place for a crime he would only describe as a violent one that involved hitting a family member.

"I wanted to be an Air Force pilot," Williams said, averting his gaze. "It's one of my little childish dreams I'll probably never fulfill. But I have been amazed at some of the things I can actually do in here."

Williams is studying computer science and food and beverage management, two fields that he says he excels in.

"Knowledge is what takes you places," Williams said. "I always used to lie on my (employment) applications and said I had an education. Now I don't have to do that."

But punishment is the point of prison, many say, and benefits such as the scholarship take away from that.

"What about the victims? Nobody ever interviews the victims," said a prison guard waiting for Williams to enter a visiting room for an interview. "It's the prisoners who get all the attention."

"To take Millennium Scholarship money that kids have really worked hard to get and then reward prisoners who are incarcerated with it because they are repaying society for their crimes isn't fair," said Terry Campbell, executive director of the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a conservative think tank.

Campbell said he advocates reading programs to combat illiteracy in prison, but not scholarships that divert tax money to the wrong source.

Howard Skolnik, a Nevada Prison spokesman, said it is natural to have that attitude about prisoners, but the system needs to also address the problem of recidivism, something that programs such as the Millennium Scholarship have been helping with.

"I have not yet seen anybody who has been denied a Millennium Scholarship because a prisoner received one," Skolnik said. "There is a perception that you should not give anything to inmates, and that perception, if anything, has grown."

Skolnik points out that today's inmates may be your neighbors one day.

Within the next year, Nevada is expected to release between 2,400 and 4,000 inmates. Of those, about 74 percent will return to prison.

Rehabilitation advocates point to higher education as a way to combat high recidivism.

"We know that there's a very strong link between low levels of education and high rates of crime," said Brigette Sarabi, executive director of Western Prison Project, a nonprofit advocacy group geared toward rehabilitation and reducing incarceration.

"We really need to look at this as either are we giving them a freebee or making an investment and saving a lot of money down the road?"

Although there are no studies in Nevada that link the level of education to recidivism, a Texas Department of Justice study shows a connection.

For prisoners with the level of high school or less, the recidivism rate was 60 percent. That dropped to 14 percent for inmates with two years of college and to 5 percent for inmates with a bachelor's degree.

Nevada's prison system offers inmates mostly skills training and schooling toward high school diplomas. Guinn said a pilot program is in the works that will teach inmates how to train wild horses rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management.

Other facilities teach skills such as making furniture. A host of other vocationally oriented degrees will be offered through the prison system soon, Hall said.

If the 13 inmates are allowed to keep their scholarships, the state could have a vehicle for its own study on recidivism, Moore said.

Rogers said he's seen the effects of higher education in prison already.

"I know it's hard for a guy like me to look on the other side and see what other people see and know what other people are thinking about me, but on the other hand I just know what this has done for me," Rogers said. "It's given me a dignity about myself and made me think I can do it out there."